And so it happened that last weekend I came to be in the small English towns of Canterbury and Dover - venturing out of the city by myself for the first time. I like cities - they make me feel safe. But the country - the country is another matter. I toured around Canterbury Cathedral with a horde of French teenagers on a weekend school trip, remembered that cathedrals freak me out, and left. Which brings me to my second travel tip.
Guidebooks can be wrong.
So wrong, in fact, that they can identify an enormous 12th century stone fortress as being located in a town in which it is not. Castles are frequently located on Castle Street. Not much more to say about that, other than it's useful to know when wandering around aimlessly looking for a six-story building that turns out to be a pile of rocks. If a town is boring, leave. After wandering miserably around Canterbury, fighting through the groups of previously mentioned French teenagers, all of whom were now carrying pale green Marks and Spencer bags, it occurred to me that there was absolutely no reason that I couldn't get back on the train and go somewhere else, which is what I did.