Trip to Dover, England

Monday morning, after John worked 12 hour shifts Friday through Sunday, we decided to get out of town. We booked a room at a little B&B in a town called Deal and drove 2 1/2 hours to the coast. Most of the way we were on the freeway but to actually get to Deal our GPS took us on this insanely narrow road. Now, we have gotten pretty used to narrow roads here but this was new for us. There was literally only room for one car and when you came up to another car, one of you had to pull over or get run over... I was very thankful John was driving!!!After we got settled into our room we headed for Dover to see the English Channel and get a glimpse of Dover Castle, where we spent all day Tuesday. We headed up to the White cliffs and watched ferries come in and out of the castle harbor. It was so neat to see that they are still using it. Haylee had a blast playing with bubbles and barking at a dog that she so badly wanted to play with.

For dinner we went to a place called the Lighthouse Inn and Restaurant and got to try something we've never had before. For an appetizer they brought out a bowl of whole Whitetail fish that you eat head and all. (I was thrilled to find that they at least took out the bones...) They were DELICIOUS!!! Even Haylee loved them! She shoved a whole fish in her mouth and handed me the tail. Too funny!
Tuesday morning we got up and had a delicious English breakfast and headed back to Dover. We went down another treacherous road to the waterfront and walked along the beach. The beaches here are very rocky and not sandy like back in the states and Haylee was not thrilled with the idea of walking on it...We took a foot path up to the top of the cliffs and enjoyed the gorgeous view. But man was it windy!!









Finally, we headed to Dover Castle and spend about 6 hours there. Like I said before, it was VERY windy but an absolutely gorgeous day!! There were a lot of hills to climb so we definitely got our workout for the day. We did 3 different tours, one of the underground tunnels that housed the hospital and operation headquarters during WWII and 2 of the tours took us down into caves where they set up a lot of their defensive posts during the war. We also got to see a Roman Lighthouse and the old Anglo-Saxon Church which was beautiful. Pretty much everywhere you looked out you could see the ocean and pictures just really can't do it justice. It was amazing! Even 6 hours at the castle wasn't near enough to see everything so we will definitely be back. We had such a great adventure and it was so nice getting away as a family!!