Girls Day to Calais!

We had wanted to do one last girls day out somewhere. We had thought about going to Bordeaux, but timing wise and price wise it just didn’t work out. We decided to go to Calais, a cute little fisherman village about an hour away on the ocean. To die for idea.

Unfortunately miss AP was not able to come along, so it was Petey, Mags, Laura and myself. We got up nice and early and went to the train station. For only an hour train ride, it went pretty quickly. We spent most of it talking about grades and teachers, and school so an uplifting convo for sure eh. Not. But of course we had some good laughs anyways; I think our laughing caught some attention, but whatever, we were having fun.

We get to Calais and we decided since we knew nothing about the city we would venture to the tourist office and see. Well turns out they didn’t open until 10am, and it was just before 9. So we got some breakfast instead. Petey and I were thrilled to find an English breakfast on the menu. That is the one thing Lille lacks: a breakfast joint. Don’t get me wrong, I love the croissants, but sometimes you could just go for some sausages, bacon, toast, or pancakes. No such luck here. So needless to say, we were psyched.

We got ourselves to the tourism office and he handed us a large map and I got him to circle the cool things that we could do that day. The beach, the lighthouse, some shopping malls, important monuments, and city hall. Great! We were off! Where to first?



We started walking towards the water and came across a cute little park. It was still early, so some people were on benches while others reading books on the grass. Then we came in…and well, had some fun. There were palm trees and we love the palm trees. Had a little photoshoot and started the day off with a bang compliments of the jumping picture. We kept walking and out of the corner of our eye spotted the lighthouse! Yay! How gorgeous! I have always wanted to go in one, but the tours weren’t for another couple hours, so we said we would go back. We never did because we got so preoccupied with other things, however, very cool just the same.



We even came across the church that Charles de Gaulle got married in – very cool! We walked and chatted and decided to finally venture to the water! On the way is to date, probably one of the funniest pictures I have ever taken. We were walking trying to find the coast and Mags was really cold. She put her hands under Petey’s armpits, except that Petey is ticklish – uh oh. Petey is laughing her head off, and Mags put her face closer to Petey. The picture turned out as follows: it looks like Mags is a huge stalker, smelling Petey. Love, love, love it.



The water was so worth it. The weather had been a bit off and on, a couple drops here, a couple drops there but when we got to the beach, the sky was blue and some clouds were in and out. We lucked out. We found a bench and just sat for a while, staring and snapping some shots. Of course, now was a good a time as any for a photoshoot. The beach was bare, not a single person in sight, so the picture is divine. We walked back up the hill of the beach and decided to celebrate with a beer. This is where our nickname “Storm Trooper 167” was born. Somehow I mentioned that I loved the movie Twister, and that we should do that, and can you imagine us all in a van chasing storms. We all concluded that we needed nicknames: (1) after the first jumping picture of the day, Mags called me Miyagi; yes like Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid, (2) Mags was dubbed James Bond after he silent escape move in Amsterdam, (3) Petey had been our affectionate name for Paddy for a while since one time she came over and Laura was trying to yell Paddy and feast at the same time…Petey came out. I don’t think I’ve used the name Paddy in months now (4) Amy was amypants, aka AP (5) Laura was officially dubbed Chang about a week later after Mr. Chang from the show Community; she is the teacher, the oldest and marches…a lot. Storm Troopers 167 featuring Miyagi, James, AP, Petey and Chang was born. God I loved my girls. I think our beer might have aided with our level of creativity on that one.

We kept the adventure going by walking the streets and essentially window shopping. Walking along we came across a cute little tea shop, which you could tell Laura was dying to go inside, so we did. The place was tiny, cute and filled with art. Since Mags, Petey and I had each had a beer (Laura passed), we didn’t order but Laura ordered chai tea. When the lady came back with 4 glasses…we were a tad confused. Her drink had been 3 EUR, so we were worried that her bill would be x4, but we would figure it out. And yep, out came a huge pot of steaming chai tea; smelled fabulous. We each had several glasses, honestly, I think I had 3 or 4 but damn it was good. Turns out they were closing….at 2pm, so we had to head out. The time came to pay the bill…and BAM: 3 EUR. We couldn’t believe it. Imagine if we had each ordered one? No way.

So we are walking around more and we caught a bus. Did you know they have free public transportation? How fabulous! So we caught a bus and planned to take it wherever it took us. Turns out the driver has a great taste in music and was busting jams the whole ride. Pretty sure we stayed on the bus longer than intended just to listen/dance. We ended up jumping off at a random stop because we had seen what appeared to be an opera and a gorgeous church. Yay! On our way to the church, we decided to get some food. Mags had been talking about Mexican food for a while, and what did we find? A little sandwich joint with Mexican hotdogs! Ha! We totally had to get them, so Petey, Mags and I got the Mexican hotdogs and Laura chose a chicken sandwich I believe. Man though, ours was delicious.

At this point of the day, it starts raining and we are just cursing ourselves. Calais is a cute tiny village, but its much better with sun you know? We finally came across the Opera which came in perfect timing since we needed some shelter from the rain. We couldn’t see much other than the front lobby, but the outside was beautiful. The rain didn’t seem to be giving up anytime soon, and since we were right close to the shopping mall we decided to head inside. Of course I came across H&M, which I adore, and am a HUGE sucker for, so that was a no-brainer. Ended up buying a couple pieces and left totally satisfied.

We decided to venture to city hall: the last piece on our list for the day. On our way we saw a fabulous pirate bar/restaurant of sorts with a pirate statue outside. Quick little photo shoot and we were off again. We came across city hall, but we were more intrigued by the garden. Gorgeous really, but there was another huge park across the street.

Now Petey and I have a list of things to do while we are here…right. A double-dog dare is one of those things. You are able to dare someone to do something and they cannot object. A couple weeks ago I was able to use my DDD on Petey and she debated using hers on me in Calais. She wanted me to run through the gorgeous water fountain that was located in the park across from city hall. Not a chance. I had my fingers crossed but luckily I didn’t have to. Phew.

We saw on the map that that there was a Citadelle nearby and ours here in Lille is gorgeous so we decided to search and locate what appeared to be the massive garden on the map. We finally found it, but couldn’t find how to get in! We managed to come across a cute little staircase but on the way up Mags stepped in a pile of dog poo. Oh boy did we laugh. She had no idea what to do. Do you run up the rest of the stairs or back track? We voted run up! She ran to the closest patch of green and went to town. Turns out the Citadelle isn’t as pretty as you would think; it was just a soccer field. Strange.

We had a little bit of time to kill before the train came and we had come across a ‘troll’ bar so when we passed it coming back from the Citadelle we decided we had to go in. Of course at that hour we were the only ones in there but still. Troll beer…who knew. Turns out its delicious! And the coolest damn logo as well, which was plastered all over the bar, tables, doors. Really funky spot.

Train time. We headed to the station and we were super early. We had thought for a second we would catch an early train and ran down, but nope. We had some time to kill. So we grabbed a bench and just chatted. A train pulls up but is on the wrong side of the tracks. Not our train, nope. So we keep chatting then we thought maybe it would be our train? I went and asked one of the men who worked on the train and he said that wasn’t our train. So we keep talking when the whistle goes and the train starts leaving. Yeah…turns out that was our train. Are you serious?! Absolutely. You should have seen our faces. We had waited for almost an hour, and OUR train left. How does that even happen? We had to wait another couple hours for the next one, so we went and got some dinner at a local joint down the street. Onion soup – yumm. We were in time to catch OUR train. Oh boy. What a hell of a day. We got in at around 11ish and it was bed. For such a relaxed girls day, we were exhausted; a girls day well spent indeed!