Day Tripper

The great thing about London is its very useful transportation system which gets you out of the city and into the country. And it makes it very easy to invite yourself on other people’s excursions without inconveniencing them too much. For example, I went to Canterbury and Dover with Lauren and her grandma, and thanks to the train we had a great time!

Before going, I really had no idea what there was to see in either place; I just knew there were some famous tales about Canterbury written long before my time.

In Canterbury we found the cathedral and went in for a look. Part of it is under construction, and underneath the scaffolding it didn’t look that big. However, when we got inside we found out it was actually quite roomy! You walk in and see the main area of the church where the congregation sits in front of the altar, but then you can go behind the altar and there’s another whole section!

Back there you can see different shrines to random people that we’d never heard of, and there is also a candle where it's believed the Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered.

We saw some children there on some sort of school field trip, and it was so funny because they were dressed up like knights and bishops! It was very cute. I couldn’t get a very good picture of them without acting really creepy, but I tried anyway.

Then we hopped back on the train and made it to Dover. We didn’t really know where we were going when we got off the train; we just looked for the white cliffs. We made it down to the water, and I realized that I hadn’t seen the coast in a long time! It was a beautiful day, and with all the walking we got in I was rather toasty. I definitely wished I had worn shorts and a t-shirt rather than pants and long sleeves. But – what are you gonna do?

Dover is the point where England is closest to France, and it’s where the chunnel connects the two. We could see the port from our high vantage point, and there were a lot of ships going in and out at surprisingly high speeds. One of the shipping companies was named Sea France, and I was entertained because I got to – see France! And actually, since it was a beautiful and clear day we could see across the water to the real France which was exciting too. And the air was wonderful to breathe. Having been in London so long, I'd forgotten what it's like to have clean air. Usually, other than the cigarette smoke, I don’t notice the air quality, but when you have actual fresh air again it’s amazing.

The cliffs themselves were beautiful, and it was fun to walk along the top of them. Of course, when we were on top of them we couldn’t see the white part without falling over the edge, but occasionally there was a break and we had a good view.

On our way back we ended up taking a different path down the cliffs in the hopes that we wouldn’t have to climb back up the hill we'd just come down. It worked for a while, but then we ended up at a dead end after pushing our way through bushes and crawling under tree branches ... ultimately we had to turn around and backtrack. It was a good try though. And a fun day.