Lost in France – Part 1

I spent Saturday night in a ropy pub B&B in Dover. Getting in late I thought it best just to go for the closest rather than traipse around the town. It had a loud band on so I drank some whiskey to a Johnny be Good medley and Teenage Kicks and listened to grizzled Carl at the bar who thinks the youth of today are unfairly maligned and used to work on banana boats which are very fast and never spend more than 12 days at sea. I missed the first ferry by minutes after walking down to the port (past a string of lovely looking B&B's offering much cheaper rooms) but got rescheduled for the next crossing without problems or surcharges. I walked from Calais port to the station and felt very smug as my co-passengers arrived from the bus as I was tucking into my second crepe at the restaurant de gare. In Lille they have huge black plastic statues of babies with wings and scaly tails and lovely fountains and lots of bars selling moules and frites and beer. I'm don't know if the missed ferry would have been enough to spanner up the whole plan and so to make sure I got on the wrong train at Lille (it was the right one on the board but the wrong one on the platform) so instead of skirting round the edge of France, preferably through Belgium, I ended up going through Paris and then onto Troyes. I got in late again but wasn't falling for the first hotel trick this time. Oh no. I did a full circuit around the town and found that everything was around the hundred euro mark, or full, or shut before heading back to the cheapest hotel outside the station. Still - I got to have a cocktail in the main square which was called a Tahiti and came with a red sugar encrusted rim, a skewer of fruit balanced on the top and an umbrella, which it didn't need as even at that time of night it was still warm enough for bare shoulders. The train station hotel had rooms on balconies around a central courtyard with giant plastic coconut palm trees – class.
I'm finding that I remember more French than expected but being as I expected zero it's still not much help. I am struggling with the temptation to use a 'Carry -On' accent and speak in pidgin French in an Ab Fab way. I am eating more ham and cheese baguettes than I would like and nowhere near enough moules, frites and beer.