Dover England

Dover England was not the place I expected, it was both much worse and much more amazing than I was imagining. And even though every person who had been to Dover and who I had told I was headed to Dover exclaimed “Why on earth would you go there”, I am so glad we did in fact go there and I would actually go again. Dover is situated on the South Eastern shore of England and it is the point closest to mainland Europe. As such it has been a major port for most of England’s history and continues to be today. The main industry in the area is obviously the port and all the jobs associated with shipping, receiving and maintain the massive ferry port which bring both people and goods from Europe by way of Calais France. Despite the fact that it got heavily shelled from cross channel guns during WWII, it has some of the oldest complete buildings in the country. Including some excellent examples of early Norman and Tudor buildings. As well as a museum dedicated to a painted roman house that was unearthed in the area. As a large communication center for many wars there are a number of memorials and museums dedicated to its military history which is ultimately why we were there. That and we wanted to watch the boats come and go from the port. Dover sadly has a fairly high crime rate, though I don’t think this should deter people particularly interested in the unique sights of the area. The majority of the crime stats are sadly related to domestic violence, which sort of goes hand in hand with such an incredibly economically depressed area. The entire high street was boarded up and the streets were full of people on the down and out. Including several large groups lining up for soup kitchens from local churches. And even despite all this you can find numerous articles online talking about how much people love living in Dover and doing everything they can to turn the community around. We would later learn that the port manager changed in recent years and the first money saving action was to lay off all full time employees and only hire contractors, which normally come into town for work rather than live in the area. Leaving most people without jobs. That being said we were there for two days and had no issues. Our hotel manager was such a gem, he actually drove us around a bit because it was raining and we had about a mile to walk to Dover Castle which is what we were planning on touring while there. We had stellar food at The Allotment an art deco cafe serving up surprisingly fresh and healthy food. And had an absolute blast hiking the cliffs after touring the castle. I also really loved how international Dover England was, since it is only a couple hours via ferry across the channel the area was buzzing with German and French tours groups and hearing all the languages and sharing the local history with them felt very important, given in mostly cases the wars fought over the channel were England against one or both of them.
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Capri, Italy

Our last day down by Sorrento we spent on the island of Capri. We took our little tram up to Sorrento and hoped on the ferry boat for the day. Since we were on a schedule to ensure we got off the island at the end of the day we didn’t have a whole lot of time to see much. Our friends had a tour to visit the Blue Grotto, so once we disembarked they met up with their tour group and we headed up the hill to explore the area.

We didn’t manage to make it to Capri’s Villa Jovis, a roman palace that is now an archaeological site that can be toured. After our all day trek through Pompeii the day before we were looking for something a little more low key and just chose to wander around the streets and take in the sights.

We headed straight up the hill and wandered into a number of various businesses. I think our favorite was probably the sewing shop. They had so much fabric it was even hanging from the ceiling. We continued up the hill and managed to find where all the people were hanging out. All the designer shops seemed to be huddled together near the top of the hill part of town. There were so many fashionable fancy people and so many shops neither of us would have ever even thought of buying anything in. But it was really fun to window shop and people watch.

We ended our day in Capri meeting back up with our friends and sitting on the beach near the ferry port for a good few hours. Then we caught the ferry back to Sorrento, had some dinner and took our trolley back to our campsite for our last night before heading to Venice the next day.

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