Calais Hotels

Calais is a city in the Nord-Pas de Calais region of France. It is the closest point on the French mainland to England; Dover lies across the English Channel (La Manche) just 32 km (20 miles) away. The town has a major cross-channel ferry port and the French entrance to the Channel Tunnel is nearby. Calais is popular with British day-trippers arriving by ferry or on Channel Tunnel shuttle trains one reason being due to the fact that France has lower taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Large warehouse supermarkets have sprung up on the outskirts of Calais just to serve these British "booze cruisers" who return to the UK with their suspensions groaning under the weight of cheap booze and cigarettes. While most tourists view the town as simply a port there is a little more to the town. As Churchill might have put it, ‘never in the field of human tourism have so many travellers passed through a place and so few stopped to visit.' Indeed, there are few compelling reasons for the 24 million people who travel by way of Calais each year to stop and explore – pity the local tourist office, whose job it is to snag a few of the Britons racing to warmer climes. That said, the town – a mere 34km from the English town of Dover (Douvres in French) – has three speciality museums, some decent restaurants and, of course, Rodin's The Burghers of Calais . In addition Calais, once famed for its lace, makes a convenient base for exploring French Flanders and the Channel coast by train, bus or car.