Canterbury Tales

Yesterday we (Mary, Heather, Laura, David, and I) took the National Express bus to Canterbury. We left at about 9:30 and it took about 2 hours to get there.

When we got there it was rainy and pretty miserable. But we grabbed some brochures and things from the information center and decided to get some lunch as it was past 12 at that point. We had lunch at a little fish and chips place that seemed to be a local favourite. Next to where we had lunch was a exhibit for the Canterbury Tales. We looked at it and Laura, who had seen it before, told us it was odd and an a bit funny.

After lunch, we got tickets to get into the Cathedral and then decided that we wanted to have a guided tour. The next guided tour was at 2:30 so we bought our tickets for that and then left to go see more of the city. We wandered around a bit and talked about what we thought would be fun. The Canterbury Tales place kept coming up in conversation...

So we finally decided to go into the Canterbury Tales exhibit. It was hilarious! It was a series of rooms, in which was a different story, or tale. They all contained wax figures and it supposedly smelled the way that it would back then. It was a very musty, dank, and stifling smell. But it was a lot of fun. It did not have a lot of light, each room would light up a bit as we went in it. It was rather scary to see life-sized wax figures and hear voices in the low lighting...and when they shout behind you...that can be rather scary as well... But we had a lot of fun in it and talking about it afterwards. :-)

Then we went back for our tour of the Cathedral. It was a very interesting tour. Our tour guide talked a lot about all the archbishops of Canterbury who had been killed (totaling 5). He told us the story about Thomas Becket, one of the archbishops, who was killed in the Cathedral. It is a beautiful cathedral with lots of different styles of architecture and lots of different styles of stained glass all over the place.

Afterwards we all went to get coffee, tea, and hot chocolate at a cafe chain that is everywhere in England it seems, Cafe Nero. It was very good and our servers were nice and very generous. We sat around and talked and laughed and warmed up for a bit.

Then we wandered up and down the cobbled roads for a bit longer until 5:30ish when David, Laura, and I decided to go to Evensong at the Cathedral. It was beautiful! They had a good choir and I really enjoyed the service. It made the Cathedral a resting place for the soul. It was really refreshing.

Then we met back up with Mary and Heather and decided to get supper before heading back to the bus station. It took us waaaay too long to decide where to eat...everyone had to compare prices of the little pubs and cafes along the road... We finally decided on a nice little Italian restaurant next to a small river or stream that went under the road. The food was really good... Then we went to the bus station and headed back to London. It was a really fun day trip to take!

Prayer requests: Andrew is still in the hospital. They are planning to discharge him on Wednesday at some point. We are hoping that they won't have to push the date back any more. Papa and Ann are flying out to visit me this weekend so you can pray that they get here safely. Also, I've been pretty tired and a lot of the people in the program are getting sick... So you can pray for sleep and that the sickness won't spread. I think that's all for now. Thank you so much!!