Tales From Canterbury

Finally the weather has started to break and you can actually walk outside for long periods of time without freezing to death. Yesterday, I took the train about 1 1/2 hours outside London to visit Canterbury. The village has been around since the Iron Age...43 AD if you can believe that.

I spent the day walking around. The village is partially surrounded by a wall that was built in the 1300's. Here is part of the wall.

The wall is integrated into everyday life. Here is a car driving through the wall into the village. Kinda funny to see.

One of the main gates into Canterbury.

There is a small river that runs through Canterbury that you can take boat rides on. Apparently, they use to drown witches in the river back in the day. They would strap the woman to a stool and hold her under water. If she did not drown, then she was a witch and they would burn her alive (lovely). If she did not survive and drowned...then she was not a witch and her name was cleared (great...dead but not a witch).

The biggest thing to do in Canterbury is visit the Cathedral. Here it is towering over the village.

Once you actually get to the Cathedral, you realize it is just massive. This is a picture of just half of it.

Probably the highlight of the whole experience was the music. I just happened to be visiting while a group was practicing for an upcoming concert. The music was amazing and I felt like I was back at St. Olaf. I sat and listened to the music for a while and then walked throughout the Cathedral listening to the music the whole time.

The architecture was amazing and again, the place was huge.

There was stain glass everywhere.

There was also a lovely courtyard off to one side of the Cathedral.

Throughout the courtyard there was lots of graffiti. People had carved their initials into the stone. I have to ask, how many people have seen graffiti from 1603?!!!!!

Overall, it was a very nice day trip outside of London. I am looking forward to hitting some other towns in the following months.