Cathedrals and castles
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2008
1
9
45
Trip End
Jan 01, 2009
Canterbury, England, United Kingdom
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Canterbury is adorable! There is a huge pedestrian shopping area that has lots of fabulous shops I avoided. The buildings are a perfect blend of old and new. We stopped at Starbucks to get a dose of caffeine before continuing on to where we thought there was a castle that we had spotted on the drive in. It turns out the only thing left is the wall. A little further along the wall there was a small remaining section of the castle but we didn't walk that far. Instead we turned back to the shops and the cathedral.
The girl at the cathedral admissions window somehow screwed up and I ended up saving 10 quid on the admission, which is a lot! I didn't notice right away as I was a bit confused over currencies, but Alison pointed out I seemed to pay very little and she was right.
he cathedral is stunning. I decided to buy an audio tour and Auntie Ali got my summary of the audio guide. The cathedral has a huge crypt which is really interesting. Actually, the entire cathedral is spectacular. We spent a fair amount of time there before going back into the pedestrian mall where we had spotted a crepe stand. Our lunch crepes turned out to be kind of gross. They tasted like the oil used to cook them was old or bad or something, and left a nasty aftertaste. So we ditched our crepes and went into Pizza Hut.
After lunch, we went back to the car and made our way back towards Tunbridge Wells, stopping in at Hever Castle. Poor Alison has been here more times than she can count as a tour guide to the Canadian branch of our family, so she decided to skip the interior tour and I ventured in alone.
Hever is where Anne Boleyn grew up and was courted by Henry VIII. The castle has a very quaint feel to it and houses a museum. There are a lot of Boleyn family artifacts and lots of history about the Boleyn's and King Henry VIII, but also details about the other owners of the castle.
Outside the castle there are extensive gardens. We walked around in the pouring rain, which started sometime while I was in the museum. There is a yew maze and a water maze, as well as the gardens. The Italian garden is beautiful, even when your feet are wet and your jeans are sticking to your ankles. There is also a lake at the far end of the gardens. It looked like a great place to live and would have been lovely in the sun we had earlier today.
Once we had explored the gardens we resembled drowned rats so we went back to Alison's where we dried off and relaxed once again with some wine. Alison made me another great dinner, this time fish and chips which seemed appropriate for my last dinner in England.
