Crazy Day in Calais

Calais, Calais, Calais...I don't even know where to start here. Maybe I should lay this out in list format, just to get it all over with. Well, first off:

Here's our photo of the town hall and the giant peacock bush in front of it. This is such a French thing to do. Oh, and the peacock lights up, of course it does.

As luck would have it, our hotel wasn't anywhere near the city center, because--how do I explain this--from what we saw of Calais, it isn't really your typical French town at all. It has a quaint little downtown area that is more characteristic, which is where we spent the bulk of our day. But for the most part Calais actually reminds me more of an American city. It's ringed by freeways, large stretches of open space, ugly parking lots, and patchy suburbs. The view out our hotel window was a Buffalo Grill.

It takes 15 minutes to drive from our hotel to the downtown area, a location which for various reasons (food, something to do for 5-6 hours before our train, etc.) we needed to get to even though the train station is actually in the opposite direction. So we thought we might wake up nice and early and take a bus. Here's what happened instead.

Oh geez, maybe I'll start the list now.

1. Pleasant hotel front desk worker offers to give us a ride. We decide to accept his offer instead of taking the bus.

2. Pleasant hotel front desk worker leads us out to the parking lot. And then takes a severe turn and stops in front of this huge, old, bright yellow van.

3. Hotel worker opens the van's back doors and motions for us to get in. There are no seats, no ledges. It's basically a metal box.

4. I decide to be a gentleman and let Dustin take the back while I go sit up front with the baby, where there actually is somewhat of a seat.

5. We start up the van with Dustin rolling around in back trying to figure out what to hold on to and where to sit. In front, I attempt to have a civilized conversation with our host, Mr. Hotel Worker.

6. Mr. Hotel Worker turns out to be from Nepal. This would explain why it's almost impossible to communicate with him in either English or French.

7. Hotel worker tells me a long and garbled story about growing up in Nepal in the 80's and the three young American Peace Corps volunteers who taught him English. What a sweet story, I think to myself.

8. Story gets worse as hotel worker describes the severe living conditions in Nepal in the 80's and how the three Peace Corp volunteers almost went insane during their stay.

9. Finally, we get dropped off in downtown Calais and Dustin can escape. It really did look like we had kidnapped him, what with that whole back-of-the-van situation and all.

10. Dustin looks down after getting out and discovers that there was a fold-up stool on the floor of the van that whole time.

11. Since our train doesn't depart for hours, I leave Dustin and Henry safely at the SNCF Gare and set off to find something for us to do. We'd like to be indoors as much as possible, given the fact that it's freezing outside.

12. I find a conveniently located movie theater. It's 11:30 am. The neon sign says it's open.

13. After reading the schedules posted in the window, I decide to go in. I push the door, which opens easily.

14. Half the lights are off inside the movie theater. Nobody in sight. It's strangely quiet. I tilt my head, wondering if that faint high-pitched whistle is tinnitus or my imagination.

15. "Bonjour?" I call out.

16. WEEE OOO WEEE OOOO WEEE OOOO WEEE OOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

17. Yep, that's an alarm. Lights flashing, siren wailing. I've just broken into a movie theater.

18. I look around, wave at the security camera, and walk back out the door.

19. Feeling oddly relaxed, I casually stroll back to the SNCF Gare and inform Dustin that he's married to a criminal.

20. I suddenly realize that we're not in London anymore and that 11:30 am is the beginning of the French lunch hour, which isn't really an hour because it lasts until 1:30 or 2 pm. Therefore, some idiot movie theater worker must have left the sign on and the door open when he went out for lunch, and I just happen to be the only person American enough to assume it could actually be okay to enter.

21. We walk all the way up and down Main Street looking for something else to do on a Sunday in a dinky French town. As we walk, I glance over and notice a huddle of cars around the movie theater. There are men standing on the sidewalk talking and scratching their heads, clearly confused.

22. I kind of like being a criminal at large.

23. We finally duck into a restaurant, since that's the only place open. It's also the only place where we can kill a few hours before the cops hunt me down and/or we go catch our train back to Bar-le-Duc.

24. Happily, said restaurant turns out to be a fabulous place. French restaurant staff SO do not care if you spend nearly four hours eating their multiple-course meal and talking. In fact, they'd probably be offended if you didn't.

Here are some pics:

Yep, they still had their holiday decorations up, it was only the 3rd of January. Henry slept like an angel through most of the meal and woke up right before dessert to find himself in the coolest. place. ever. To make it even better, right over the super-awesome-shiny-gold railing next to him, he saw a little girl sitting in a booth with her parents. Now of course if you know Henry you know that he's got to talk to her or show off or something. He was in one of those hysterically friendly happy moods.

Okay, so here's a video of that.



You really can't tell in the video too much, but he does actually get quite loud towards the end.

Anyways, the restaurant was very relaxing and the food was amazing and it was an extremely pleasant experience which, all by itself, changed my earlier opinion of how the day was turning out.

We caught a bus to the station and even though the bus driver got stuck talking to some guy for five minutes and even though this resulted in us nearly missing our train, and even though we had to make a mad dash for the train alongside an entire busload of people and then wander up and down the aisles finding our seats for a good half hour while carrying what felt like all our earthly possessions...and even though we got home at nine or ten and I had work at 8 am the next morning...this restaurant made up for it. Hands down.

And that's the power of French food, people.