Canterbury was a bit of a disappointment; I had heard so much about it and had been meaning to go for ages. The trip was prompted by my lack of passport, it was in for renewal so for around 3 weeks I was to be passportless and Canterbury is only about 2 hours from London.
Canterbury is a pretty town, cobblestone streets, greenery, a roman wall, a river and a stunning and giant Cathedral but aside from the Cathedral there wasn't much else to do but shop. Since im stuck paying off a ticket home for March shopping is not on my agenda for a while.
Since im doing a course on the good old Romans I made Adrian come with me to a Roman museum. Canterbury was once a Roman town (oh wait I mentioned the Roman wall, that must have been obvious) and during WWII Canterbury had been bombed. Getting the town back together after the bombings, and sorting through the rubble they started to notice more and more Roman Artefacts and set up digs looking for more. They found the foundations of a house, which is where they put the museum and lots of your obvious suspects, coins and pottery.
Where we were staying used to be the Gatehouse to an old monastery, we tried to have a look at the monastery but it was all locked up so I had to content myself with the Gatehouse and some gardens.
There was a tour of the town organised, a ghost walk, at night so we decided to go on that. Momentarily distracted we missed the walk, so just wandered about ourselves. The Cathedral is normally gated up at night and hidden behind walls, but luckily for us there was an organ concert on that night so we were able to walk around the Cathedral at night. Very beautiful.
After asking at about 5 restaurants, which were all full, we finally stumbled on one that was able to accommodate us. After we sat down and ordered drinks we looked at the menu. It was a seafood restaurant!! I hate any form of seafood, and we scoured the menu and found some vegetarian pasta. Phew. Well I knew what I was eating then!
The next morning we went to the Cathedral, it was a Sunday so we had to do it in sections as part of it was closed in the morning. A good thing as it was quite big and a break in the middle worked out well. Bizarrely they had a brochure titled "Canterbury Cathedral and Australian Connections". I can't really remember what they were but there was about 14 of them, such as "this guy from Australia gave us money" "this person from Australia worked for us" and in one place they had the Australian coat of arms.
The church itself was beautiful, and did I mention huge! As with all churches over this way there was a candle table and the flickering candles always look beautiful and I have started to light a candle each time I go to a new church. The candle is lit as a prayer or wish. Unfortunately I didn't know but as I lit the candle my uncle was lying in hospital unconscious in Australia and passed away a few days later. A special and lovely uncle indeed, many happy memories of my younger years involve my Uncle Ern.
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