Why Europe? Why retrace a route established centuries ago and since beaten into the dirt by countless millions of tourists? Why write about the most The world’s first tourists, making a few new footprints myself and doing it all on a budget. Truly, this was the more important factor, because over the next 12 weeks I am embarking on the Grand Tour, retracing the steps of
The route of the 18th-century Grand Tourists, for whom Dover was their launching pad, a place to collect their thoughts and belongings and to savor one last, brief moment of Englishness before encountering the Continent. Second, I wanted to follow, as precisely as possible, First, since few visitors stick around, I hoped to find bargains aplenty, offered by eager - nay, desperate - hoteliers and restaurateurs. I arrived in Dover from London by train (£24.30 one way, or about $47.87 at $1.97 to the pound), planning to spend three days there - probably twice as long as the average tourist. No one lingers in Dover - not unless they have to. The port dominates the town, and when there’s construction on the A20 road, the trucks - bearing French, British, Czech and Turkish plates - rumble through itsĬenter all night long. This small town, nestled in a valley between the famous white chalk cliffs, is home to the world’s busiest passenger port its ferries take almost 14 million people and more than 2 million cargo trucks across