January 28, 2012

London to Dover

Saturday we took a trip to the White Cliffs of Dover and Canterbury.  The cliffs are on the edge of England, and people said that you could see the coastline of France from the beach.  Dover is still used as an active port today and was around 2 hours away from the center.  We got to walk along the beach for a bit, which is NOTHING like the beaches back home (or even the ones in Nor Cal).  This beach had huge round rocks all over, was pretty hilly, and nasty windy.  But it was definitely worth it to see the view of the cliffs and to pretend like I could see France (everyone else said they could see the outline of the mountains....but maybe this was one of those "The Emperor's New Clothes" phenomenon where no one wanted to be left out of seeing France).    So, after some walking around on the rocky beach (which made me really homesick for the fantastic beaches back in California) and taking billions of pictures, we headed to St. Augustine's Cathedral.

Cliffs of Dover coastline

St. Augustine's Abbey is basically a mosh of boulders stacked around randomly.  It used to be an actual abbey, but Henry VIII (yep, that naughty King again) started dismantling the church and selling some of the boulders.  Essentially all that remains is a rough skeleton of what it used to be.  We had fun climbing on top of the remains of this sacred church.  Unfortunately, we seem to cause problems wherever we go, and we heard a proper old English couple remark, "our colonial cousins are jumping around and screaming."  They didn't seem mad, just simply remarking on our bad behavior as they would if they were noticing that it was cloudy.

St. Augustine's

Next up was Dover Castle, the largest castle in England.  It was used as a defensive post to protect England's shore.  We explored the main castle, the grounds, the chapel, and some surrounding smaller offsets of the castle.  The castle has some secret wartime tunnels, but unfortunately they were closed.  So dumb.  I'm getting sick of all these exciting places being closed.  We did get to look at cool recreations in the castle of what it might have looked like when it was in use.  However, we got in trouble when we started picking up props and sitting on the beds.  We could tell that nothing was authentic on display, and we had been allowed to touch everything in Dover Castle, so we assumed we'd be allowed to touch the super-fake looking stuff here.  Not the case.  We got yelled at for stroking a small lyre and other girls got in trouble when they threw themselves on the king's bed.  Whoops.

Outside Dover Castle.  Not as cool as Hampton Court, but still pretty cool.

Some secrety tunnels

View from top of the castle

Just creeping around in the place where they'd shoot arrows from

A cliff to the side of the castle

After Dover we made our way to Canterbury and got lunch in the town.  We stopped off at a fantastic little cafe and got (finally) a wonderful meal.  I got a baguette sandwich and chips (aka, fries).  So far food has been a huge disappointment in London (and I'm not talking about the .....food.... we get at the center.  I'm talking about the actual food in London.  It's all super expensive, tiny proportions, and gross.  Which is apparently the reputation is already has.  So it was nice to finally have a good meal here.  Too bad that place was 2 hours away or I'd go every day for lunch.  Oh well, back to peanut butter and nutella sandwiches for lunch (and sometimes dinner, depending on what surprise we get for dinner...).  No wonder I'm getting fat. 

A view of Dover Castle

We then got a tour of Canterbury Cathedral, a place where thousands of pilgrims came back in the middle ages to see the place of Thomas Becket's murder.  I won't bore you with the details of all the history (honestly, I'm bored with them.  We read "Canterbury Tales" and have talked about the history to death.  I am so glad I wasn't alive during the middle ages, because I would have been a pretty grumpy pilgrim to have to make the trek to Canterbury just because I'm so sick of hearing about it).  But basically Thomas Becket and the king were friends, and then they weren't friends, and then the king had him killed in Canterbury Cathedral, and then he felt bad.  So then Thomas was made a saint, and all these pilgrims started coming to Canterbury to worship him.

Canterbury Cathedral

The cathedral was fantastic overall and I loved the ancient old tour guide that took us around.  It's so funny when we go on guided tours here, because when our guide finds out we're American they start pointing out all the tiny American contributions and American details in the history of the castle or cathedral we're in.  This little tour guide skittered over to a huge display of dozens of brochures, and grabbed a stack of brochures labeled, "The American Experience in Canterbury Cathedral."  I just couldn't help but laugh at how they try to make it more personable for Americans when we make our own pilgrimages to Canterbury.

Oh, one fun thing we learned on our tour of the cathedral- we went to the area where Thomas Becket was actually murdered and learned a bit about his murder and the aftermath.  After he was killed monks came to clean the body before he was buried.  They undressed him, and were surprised to find he was wearing simple monk's clothes rather than rich, expensive clothes most rich clergymen would wear.  They felt honored that he would be humble enough to wear the scratchy clothes and live simply.  Then they took those clothes off.  And were overjoyed with what he was wearing underneath them.  A shirt and pants made from freaking hair filled with lice and maggots.  So apparently (OBVIOUSLY) hair is not comfortable to wear, and this was his way of punishing his sins.  K honestly, I'm pretty sure we can find better way to punish us for our sins, Tommy.  Like how about washing your mouth out with soap or a little whipping every now and then? (Both of these were common practices back in the day for punishing sins)  Yeah, the tour was kind of ruined for me after finding that out about Thomas.

Thomas Becket being murdered....in his hair shirt...

We got to stay for Evensong in the Cathedral after our tour and it was a fantastic experience.  They had a boy choir and an older male choir.  The service was a bit over an hour long.  It was amazing to hear songs they sang back in the middle ages in a cathedral that was hundreds of years old.  The acoustics in the cathedral were magnificent and the sound floated up to the ceiling.

After the great day trip it was a quick 2 hour bus ride back to London, and then a great dinner to get crepes (and a long bus ride around London after of course).