Canterbury

For our very last day trip (sad!) we went down to Canterbury, and then Dover.

Can I just say I'm so glad that I took British Literary History 1 and 2 Winter Semester before London??  It made me appreciate a lot of the trip so much more.  For example: Canterbury.  

Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were written in Middle English, and a pretty significant contribution to literature as we have it today.  And, the whole plot is a group of people that don't know each other make a pilgrimage to Canterbury (which was kind of in a way one of the first forms of sight-seeing).  

The reason that pilgrimages were even made to Canterbury was because Thomas Becket was martyred.  Basically, Thomas Becket had some hook-ups by being friends with King Henry II, so they had a pretty good friendship.  Becket was in some sort of position that enforced the stupid policies of the King that benefited only the King and his Courtiers (sorry for kind-of sketchy details: I feel like I have history running out my ears and it's hard to remember exactly everything).  Anyway, eventually King Henry appointed Becket to be the new Archbishop of Canterbury, in hopes that he could get the Church's views more aligned with his own.  Unfortunately for the King, Becket's new role made him suddenly pious and religious, which led him to get in quite a big rift with Henry, who couldn't get his way.  Supposedly, Henry, out of anger, said something to the affect of "Won't someone get rid of this meddlesome priest?".  Some knights interpreted this as a command, and rode off and brutally murdered Becket.  That's the gist of the story, and this is not meant to be a history record, so on to my adventures:

The Cathedral was really cool and really huge.  Since I haven't seen Westminster or St. Paul's yet, I'm pretty sure this is the most impressive one I've seen.  

We took a tour and had a really grumpy older lady tour guide, but it was still cool to hear about what she had to say. 

Me and Jacki

After we were done touring the Cathedral, we ate our sack lunches on the grass outside. Jacki had seen a sign about 2 for 1 milkshakes, and she was determined to get one, so a few of us headed to the little coffee place. The shakes were basically chocolate milk, and Jacki hated them. No one knows how to complain and make me laugh like Jacki.

Then it was back on the bus to Dover.