6/3/10 Thursday

Thursday 6/3/10

Today was our trip to Canterbury.  We all met in Greenwich  early in the morning.  This is the furthest they’ve asked us to travel on our own in order to meet up with the group.  Scott comes down in the morning all proud because he’d found a more effective method of getting to Greenwich than suggested by Nathan, our choral assistant.  (again with all the interesting directions).  Pretty soon, we had an entire group following Scott.  He always knows where he is going and I think people have come to expect that.  We got separated at one of the train stations and everyone started freaking out because they lost Scott (at least that was the story that was relayed to me later).  We arrived on our bus  for a very uncomfortable ride.  It was so stinkin hott on that thing.  I did not know what the deal was.  It was sooo bad that I thought about asking for a partial refund.  There is no way that the air blowing on us was AC air.  It was like luke warm!  

We finally arrived and Scott had already made a list of the places we could visit.  He catogorized them by price: free, cheap-er, and cheap.  We both really wanted to see the Normal castle and that was really the only thing we had time for anyway.  So we set out and stumbled upon it.  This thing was built during the 11th century!!!  Of course, it is only in ruins now having served it’s purpose as a royal residence, a storage facility, and the home of a gas tank.  I thought it looked pretty cool still.  Scott and I walked up this spiral staircase that had one of those darn gates that prevent you from reaching the top.  I decided it might be fun to climb over it and continue walking up the stairs. I grabbed the gate and anchored my feet on the rocks of the wall a little bit.  Scott wasn’t shouting his praises at my choice of activity so, I got a little nervous that I couldn’t do it and such and started to climb back down. There were some rot iron spokes clawing over the top but, I fit right through.  Scott documented this event of course.  The view from the top of the stairs was quite lovely. 

Scott and I wanted to check out the Canterbury museum.  We found it and it turns out that there are remnants of an ancient Roman home below the ground floor of the museum.  Totally amazing!  Too bad we didn’t have enough time to actually go into the museum. As we were walking back into the main part of town I saw this cool alley way.  I like narrow and interesting looking alley ways...during the day of course!  I decided we needed to walk through a particular one and behold, there was a lovely bridge and a grassy park area!  Scott and I felt as if we stumbled upon hidden treasure. 

We met up with the group to tour Canterbury Cathedral and St. Augustine’s Abbey.  Our tour guide at the cathedral was incredible and was able to captivate our attention for about an hour and a half.  With a combination of fun facts, historical facts, myths and folklore, and comedy, I actually felt that my money was well spent in deciding to take a guided tour even though we technically didn’t make the decision because it was part of our program.  but, anyway, there were some memorable things about that tour the biggest thing is that this church was the spiritual home for the legendary Thomas Beckett (and the destination for the pilgrims in the famous story “Canterbury Tales”).  We began our tour talking about the facade of the building and how it’s grown from it’s original romanesque structure to the gothic structure.  There is a plaque on the floor in remembrance of the “Fire Watchers” who stood on top of the roof of the church and threw bombs off and preserve this “mother of all Anglican cathedrals”.  The next memorable bit was this inner walkway outside the chapel.  We learned that through time the church began to function as a boys school.  There were midieval handprints and games carved into the stone by these children.  We were also brought to the place where Beckett was supposedly slain and told the rather groosome story.  When we went into the crypt, I was disappointed that I was unable to capture the beauty of this space.  It felt like the most reverent part of the cathedral all dimly lit and silent.  Not that those elements are necessary for reverence, obviously, but this was a much more still place than the chapel section.  There is a chapel that was a gift for French refugees to come worship in.  They continue to do so till this day and they only rarely open the doors to outsiders.  We walked up the stairs and looked at the shrine for the final burial place for Beckett (because he had three different burial places in that one cathedral).  There were stories of miracles occurring when the sick and afflicted made the journey to his burial place.  They would touch or kiss his shrine and be miraculously healed.  They would pray and kneel around the shrine so often that there are indentations in the marble.  Pretty incredible.  

-lady follows us around

-we go to the St. Augustine's Abbey

-enjoy the ruins 

-met up for boat rides

-went to evensong and barely made it in time