Two days in Dover

Guess what? We're on break at last! Our paper was due Tuesday, and break started whenever we finished. I got mine done by 4, and then I went to meet Mom and Joe. It was great to see them again. On Wednesday we went to the Dickens House Museum, the Soane Museum, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, and Baker Street. Then on Thursday morning we left for Dover with Adam. After a longish train ride (on which I slept and wrote postcards), we arrived and found our guest house. Then we went out to the beach. It was so beautiful. Seeing the blue-green waves on the pebbled shore made me so happy.

We walked up and along the magnificent white cliffs, with the sea below the whole time. It was incredibly windy, and mostly cloudy, so it was pretty cold, but it didn't matter. It was wonderful just being there, surrounded by beauty, away from the city.

We were so high up. Mom got nervous and Adam freaked out when Joe or I went too close to the edge (Joe was more dangerous than I was). There were wild ponies grazing. We walked a long way, just wandering along. Finally we turned back, left the cliffs behind, and went back to the guest house.

After hanging out there, resting, for a while, we headed out to find somewhere to eat supper. Eventually we decided on a pub. The food was delicious. Midway through the meal we noticed some random superheroes--Spiderman, Ironman, Batman, and Superman. They weren't even together. It was weird.

The next day we went to Dover Castle. It was high up on a hill; the path up was really steep. We went on a tour of the wartime tunnels and then explored on our own. There were all sorts of random ruin-like towers and little tunnels. We couldn't go in the castle keep because it was closed, which was a little disappointing. But it was fun just walking around. We could see all of Dover.

It was especially cold and windy up there, so we stopped in a restaurant and got tea and hot chocolate. The latter had whipped cream and marshmallows. Mmmm. We also got two slices of cake (chocolate and lemon) and shared them.

After a while we went back down the hill and returned to the beach one more time. Adam read aloud the poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/doverbeach.html), which we'd just had to read for the program. On the way back Mom and Joe got off the train at Canterbury, and I continued back to London with Adam, needing a day of rest, which I certainly got--I slept for 10 hours last night!