Canterbury Tales

This Saturday I went on the UCL Give It a Go Trip to Canterbury with Kun-Wei, Steven, Rachel E, Rachel L, Marie and quite a few other students. Canterbury is an adorable town, and wandering around it was an absolute delight. :)

There were punting tours offered along the River Stour but it was a bit nippy out and doing anything on water would have been a bit absurd unfortunately. Our first stop once we had gotten into the city centre was the Canterbury Cathedral, home to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Steven, Rachel L, Kun-Wei and I went and grabbed lunch (Cornish pasties-mine was filled with salmon and potatoes), and then went to tour the Cathedral.

This is the entrance to the Cathedral. Everything so ornately carved and beautiful.

Another view, you can see some more details. For those who can't see, Jesus is the big greenish guy in the centre.

This is the actual Cathedral itself. The Cathedral was founded in 607 AD by St. Augustine who had been sent by the Pope as a missionary to the Anglo-Saxons of the area. This structure was constructed in 1070 AD. The original cathedral had been ruined by raids.

To state the obvious, the inside is gorgeous. There was stained glass everywhere and vaulted ceilings.

I love stained glass windows so much. Especially the blue glass.

This is the Anglican Compass Rose.

There was a live orchestra playing while we were wandering about. The acoustics in the cathedral were breathtaking.

Man, the inside of the Cathedral is just so beautiful. Building it was a very impressive feat indeed.

I love this little pane of stained glass window. I'm not sure how obvious it is but I really could not get enough of the stained glass. :) I love the little details in it too. This was a very small little bit of a much bigger window.

This is the tomb of a former Archbishop of Canterbury. I forgot who it is.

This is a crazy old tomb of Archbishop John Peckham who was Archbishop from 1279-1292 according to the placard next to the tomb. One of the things I love most about England is how mind boggling old much of its things are. I'm constantly blown away by the antiquity.

The next thing we did was visit The Canterbury Tales were we got to wander through and listen to some of the stories from Caucer's Canterbury Tales. We started out at The Tabard Inn and made our way to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket (a martyred archbishop who was assassinated by four knights looking to curry favor with King Henry II).

Steven made friends at the Inn.

I'm not sure how easy it is to see in the pictures but the fake people that were a part of the exhibit were rather creepy. But the stories were entertaining (yet another book to add to my must-read list) and the experience was pretty cool. They even tried to recreate authentic smells, something that we noticed wandering through the exhibit because there were a lot of strange smells that appeared to be changing and was confirmed by a survey I took at the end.

We next decided to go to the Norman Castle, but we stopped in a little park/probable graveyard so that Steven could eat some fish and chips.

I love the vividness of the green here. The grass seems especially vibrant in England.

This picture is not from the little park, but rather from another graveyard near the Norman Castle. The sign near the castle said that it would be open until 5:ooPM but the gate was locked when we got there. :( It was around 3:00PM so we were confused and disappointed.

Even though we didn't get to explore the castle, the outsides were really cool! Once again, the age of so much here blows me away.

This store was clearly leaning, much like I imagine the Weasley's Burrow does. :D So much about Canterbury reminded me of Harry Potter. I almost felt like I was in Honeydukes when we stopped in this little sweet shop in town. This could have been because I listened to the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban audiobook on the 2 hour bus ride up to Canterbury, but I kept half expecting to see people in brightly colored robes wandering around with owls and pointed hats. It made me quite happy. All in all, it was a lovely trip. We ended the day in a little tea shop/restaurant where I enjoyed scones with some strawberry jam and clotted cream. Delicious. And I got to listen to more Harry Potter and closed eyes on the way back to UCL. So magical!

Much love and cheers.