Canterbury

I'm feeling a bit guilty today. It's Halloween and the only sign of the holiday in our house is the pumpkin on the coffee table and the pumpkin marshmallows that Brady snacked on today. Halloween is celebrated in the UK and according to several reliable sources kids do trick or treat, but it's not the same. I can assure you that our flat neighbors did not have a bowl of candy waiting for kids. I also can assure you that kids are not running up the halls of the portered flat buildings trick or treating or ringing the gate intercoms at the very large houses. We have skipped Halloween this year so I just hope Brady doesn't look back at photo albums and ask what he dressed up as when he was two.

Instead of a traditional Halloween day we decided to go to Canterbury. My mom is still in town and she wanted to see outside of the city so Canterbury was our destination of choice.

First stop was Fish and Chips at a local pub.  Well, almost first stop.  My mom decided to stop at Fat Face to get some clothing souvenirs, then we were off to lunch 45 minutes later.  She did get some really cute sweater dresses to take home. I learned by chance that the name of the pub, Thomas Becket, was in honor of Archbishop Thomas Becket who was murdered in the Cathedral in 1170.  This was a perfect lead into our next stop.

On to the Canterbury Cathedral.  The church is a Church of England church and is very very old.  The Cathedral's history goes back to 597 AD.  The details were pretty amazing.  The cathedral employs 800 people and a majority are dedicated to the ongoing maintenance and restoration of the facilities.  Another interesting fact.  The Cathedral has been a place of pilgrimage since Thomas Becket's murder.  The book, The Canterbury Tales is actually about a group of pilgrims who were traveling together on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket.  I am pretty sure I read part of this book in high school, but I couldn't remember any of the details other than the fact that it was in Old English and very hard to understand.

 

 

 

  

After the Cathedral, we headed to the Canterbury Tales exhibit.  We were all going to go through it, but it was a actually a bit scary for Brady so we decided to just let my mom go through.  The place highlighted many of the stores in the Canterbury Tales.  Recap from my mom of one of the stories.  Three men found gold and were going to split it.  One man decided he did not want to share so he put poison in a bottle of wine.  The other two men also decided they did not want to share and only wanted to split two ways.  The killed the third man and drank the wine to celebrate.  All three men ended up dead.  Moral of the story, don't be greedy.

Overall I liked Canterbury.  It had a neat city center and had tons of shops, restaurants and historic things to look at.  The train ride was smooth as well.  When we were leaving I noticed a restaurant called CJs so I think we'll have to go back so Cory can eat at his name sake.

Borough Market, London & Tower Bridges & St. Pauls Cathedral

On Saturday morning, my mom arrived from the US.  Once again, we had a goal to keep our guest awake for the entire day so she could try to get on a normal sleep schedule.    We gave her time to take a shower and have a cup of coffee and then it was off we went.  First stop was Borough market.  The Borough market takes place every Thursday, Friday and Saturday and has a wide variety of produce, prepared foods and other things for purchase.   We’ve had several friends recommend visiting the market, in particular they have recommended a stand that sells grilled cheese and potatoes with raclette cheese.  I’m sure you’re thinking, they are going all the way to a market just to have a cheese sandwich.  Yes, we were and amazingly we were not the only ones with that plan as there were 20+ people queued up.  The grilled cheese was made with emmental cheese and had onions cooked into it.  They were quite tasty.  Cory also found a stand selling baklava.  He bought enough baklava for us to eat for a week so I am going to have to forgo my evening ice cream for baklava.

Cheese Sandwich

Baklava

Market

Fruit

After the market we walked to London Bridge.  For having a song written about it, it really lacks eye appeal.  Tower Bridge is typically the bridge that people recognize and frequently mistake for London Bridge.  Since I am a Londonite, I figured I should do a little research on the origin of the nursery rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down as I was sure it had some significance.  Turns out it's not much of a story and there are differing opinions on the origin of the song.  Most popular thought is it simply has to do with the difficulties of bridging the River Thames.  Other theories suggest that the song dates back to the Vikings or is just made up.

Looking at Tower Bridge

Standing on London Bridge

From London Bridge we headed to the Tower of London.  Near the Tower of London were tons of pigeons.  Brady LOVES chasing birds and got at least 30 minutes of entertainment.

After the Tower we headed towards home.   On our walk home we happened to pass St. Paul's Cathedral. 

Brady Birthday Pictures

Birthday present from Nanny

Cake & Present time

Birthday photo shoot - so serious, can't get him to crack a smile

Whipsnade Zoo

We took last Friday off and wanted to do something special for Brady's birthday.  Our zoo memberships give us access to two zoos in the London area, one being 15 minutes from our house in Regent's Park, the other a bit 'outside' of London.  I decided it would be a perfect day trip to visit the Whipsnade Zoo which is the zoo just a 'bit' outside of the city.  I think everyone else involved in the day's activities had their doubts, not about the zoo itself, but about the journey. After much convincing everyone had bought into the great idea of a day at the zoo!

Lesson learned - the distance from your starting point does not indicate the ease or duration of the journey. 

Outbound trip summary below:

1. 20 minute tube ride
2. 10 minute process to walk through rail station and buy rail tickets
3. 7 minute wait till train arrived
4. 55 minute train ride including 4-5 stops
5. Arrived at end destination with hopes of finding correct bus stop that we had pre-bought tickets only to find out the zoo bus only runs at the top of the hour every other hour
6. 20 minute bumpy cab ride leaving everyone feeling sick

Whew, finally made it.  We had 600 glorious acres of wildlife to explore.  This is a bold statement from someone who herself is not an animal lover.  We basically had the park to ourselves.  It was obviously not peak season for a trip to a zoo.  Several of the attractions such as the train ride had been shut down for the winter except for weekends.  It was  little bit on the cool & damp side, but overall nice. You could get really close to the animals.  At times a bit too close.  They actually had some 'free roaming' animals.  Sorta like a rabbit, but not a rabbit animals.  The other thing cool about the Whipsnade Zoo is for people with cars you have the option of taking a safari type tour and bringing your car inside the zoo.

All in all, good day, awesome toffee bar, long journey!  Thanks for being good sports everyone!