Our own Canterbury Tales

Our first day trip away from London was a success! I really like this whole day trip idea because it takes very little planning, isn’t expensive, and there is so much to see right outside of London. Yesterday a group of seven of us went to Canterbury for the day. I had heard that the cathedral there was beautiful and of course wanted to re-live my English class from senior year when we read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but mostly I just wanted to do something different this weekend.

The trip to Canterbury takes about two hours, which was the perfect time for a nap since our bus left at 8:30. When we first got off the bus and started walking towards the cathedral we found ourselves in a strip mall sort of place. It wasn’t too crowded, but I thought it was interesting to see all the modern stores with a 12th century cathedral looming in the background. We first went to the Roman museum which presented a plethora of artifacts and showed reconstructions of what Canterbury would have looked like during Roman times. It was a nice museum, worth the 2 £ we paid for it but not much more. After that we wandered toward a walkway that would lead us to an old castle. We couldn’t tell if the walkway was actually the old Roman wall or just a replica of it, but either way it provided us with a nice view of the city.

When you see pictures of the castle at Canterbury it doesn’t look like much, it’s just a large stone structure that you can go inside and look around in. However, I thought it was so cool to think about what this castle meant way back when. It was a fortress; you could see a window at the top of what used to be stairs and I think its fun to imagine people running up the steps and shooting at attackers. After taking plenty of fun castle pictures, our group started to head back towards the city in preparation to see the cathedral. To get back to the city we had to walk through this gorgeous park that had a path lined with huge trees, so it was tough. We ate lunch, like good ‘ol Americans, at Subway because we needed something cheap and fast.

Before coming to Canterbury someone told me that if Thomas Beckett, who was killed there in the 1100’s, woke up today he would still recognize this cathedral. It was breathtaking. I walked around the inside with my mouth open looking up at the gigantic ceiling, admiring the stained glass and just generally feeling overwhelmed. It’s hard to describe the feeling I get when I’m in large places of worship like this, but there’s something incredible about knowing that you have come to a place that millions of other people have come to with the same purpose or direction. We left the cathedral and got lost around the grounds. I’m not even sure what all we saw but it seemed like every time we turned a corner there was another beautiful structure or garden or something to look at.

After leaving the Cathedral we went to the Canterbury Tales visitor attraction. It was an interesting place, again kind of like Disney World but I thought it was really fun. You receive an audio tour that directs you through different rooms which follow the story of the Canterbury Tales. I thought it was done very well and presented in a way that would interest people in a classic story (the teacher in me was I guess the most excited).

We did some more wandering, some shopping, and then ate at a pub where I had fish and chips for the first time! I actually ate most of my fish and of course devoured the chips. Mmm London food. Since everything in Canterbury closes at 5 and our bus didn’t leave until 8:30 we had some time to kill before our bus left so we went back to take some pictures of the Cathedral at night before hanging out at the bus stop for a bit. Overall it was a long, but very fun day.