{"id":5751,"date":"2011-05-21T19:38:50","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T18:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5751"},"modified":"2011-05-21T19:47:34","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T18:47:34","slug":"time-with-american-friends-in-dover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5751","title":{"rendered":"Time with American friends in Dover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The trouble with having friends all around the world is that I don&#8217;t see some of them for many years at a time. This is the case with our American friends Michael &amp; Laura Grace who live between Washington DC and Baltimore. So, when we heard that they would be doing a trans-Atlantic cruise that would be docking in Dover for a morning, we were quick to plan on seeing them.<\/p>\n<p>Vee and I went down the evening before and stayed in a hotel close to the docks so that, as soon as Mike &amp; Laura called at 8.30 am, we could pick them up. After a lively chat, we did a bit of tourism by visiting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.english-heritage.org.uk\/daysout\/properties\/dover-castle\/\">Dover Castle<\/a> which was built by Henry II in the 12th century.<br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Dover1.jpg\" border=\"3\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<span>Vee, Mike, Roger &amp; Laura at Dover Castle<\/span><br \/>\n<\/center><br \/>\nWhile there, we took the opportunity to go on a short tour of the Secret Wartime Tunnels which were brought into operation in 1942.<br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Dover2.jpg\" border=\"3\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<span>Mike &amp; Laura overlooking the white cliffs of Dover<\/span><br \/>\n<\/center><br \/>\nOur time together was over all too quickly and we had to drop Mike &amp; Laura back at their cruise ship the &#8220;Celebrity Constellation&#8221; by 2 pm. They have invited us over to the States and provisionally we&#8217;ve planned to go over in May 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Before heading  home for London, we took the chance to visit the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.battleofbritainmemorial.org\/the-memorial\/\"> Battle of Britain Memorial<\/a> at nearby Capel-le-Ferne. This has a wall listing all the 3,000 Royal Air Force pilots who fought in the Battle which includes Vee&#8217;s father the Czech <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk.html\">Karel Kuttelwascher<\/a>.<br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Dover3.jpg\" border=\"3\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<span>Battle of Britain Memorial<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Dover4.jpg\" border=\"3\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<span>The name of Vee&#8217;s father<\/span><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The trouble with having friends all around the world is that I don&#8217;t see some of them for many years at a time. This is the case with our American friends Michael &amp; Laura Grace who live between Washington DC and Baltimore. So, when we heard that they would be doing a trans-Atlantic cruise that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5751"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5764,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5751\/revisions\/5764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}