Mike's Travel Snaps

From Normandy, it was back to the Euro Tunnel near Calais on May 7th to swap rental cars (since the French drive on the right side of the road and the English, of course, drive on the left) and head to London. The rental car we were turning in was a Mercedes, pronounced mer-seh-DEES as opposed to mer-SAY-dees. While in Calais waiting for the Euro Tunnel, I had to prove something to all the Pulp Fiction fans back home. See it here. The Euro Tunnel (also known as the Channel Tunnel, or Chunnel) goes from Calais in France, under the English Channel, to Folkestone in England. We took the shuttle train, in which you drive your car onto a double-decker train and your car, with you inside, is ferried almost 32 miles (24 of which are actually under the Channel) at an average speed of 87 mph. The trip takes about 35 minutes. (There are also normal passenger trains available which have have a top speed of 185 mph)

map (c) 2001 Maporama www.maporama.com

In this case, though, your brain knows you are in your car. Then you feel the unmistakable sensations of forward motion as the train begins moving. Yet, the exterior of the car remains fixed (since it's inside the train car). It's quite an odd experience. Frankly, I decided to avoid the whole affair and took the opportunity to catch up on sleep.

Anyway, on to London!

My parents were going on to a hotel near Heathrow Airport for a flight out the next morning, and I was heading to my hotel: the Marriott Maida Vale--my base of operations for the next four days and five nights. Marriott has a photo of the hotel on their website here, but it's a crappy picture.

My self-made itinerary featured two days doing "touristy" type activities, one day seeing mainly Beatles-related sights, and one day with hanging-out sort of things on the agenda.

Let's begin with the usual suspects...