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.