Canterbury

We drove out to Canterbury on Friday night after work, to spend the weekend in Emily’s hometown. It poured down on the motorway; the rain was so thick in parts it was quite difficult to see where we were going!

Thankfully, things were looking up on Saturday. We walked from our hotel down to The Goods Shed for breakfast; ironically, we walked straight past Emily who had just started a driving lesson. We pretended not to watch her driving past us down the street, but we couldn’t help but notice what a fine job she was doing .

The Goods Shed has a rather novel breakfast menu – you pay a £2 cover charge, and then 50p for each item you want. Such a great concept! As Krsity pointed out, that makes it very difficult to complain they don’t have exactly what you want (though as I pointed out, they didn’t serve pancakes). Win-win! We liked it so much that we went back on Sunday, too!

After breakfast, we headed into town to see one of Canterbury’s main attractions: Canterbury Cathedral.

It was nice enough – big and church-like, really. Two things struck me as unusual about the cathedral though; firstly, real-estate for the dead seemed to be in popular demand. I’ve never seen so many plaques on a cathedral wall – all quite morbid, really!

The second thing I found odd was the money. On one wall, there were donation boxes set up for Christian Aid, with various brochures advertising how even just a little bit of money makes a huge difference. However on the other wall, you could help donate money to the cathedral, which apparently costs £12,000 per day just to keep running; not to mention the £50 million “conservation and development project” it’s currently undergoing! Call me cynical, but something there doesn’t add up.

We met up with Emily and Matthew after grabbing a quick bite at the Boho cafe. Emily was nice enough to take us for a tour around her hometown, starting with a climb up The Westgate. There was a great view of the city and cathedral from the top!

We went from there to the other end of town, where we walked along the city walls, and through some of the ruins. After a hot chocolate, our tour finished with a wander through Westgate Gardens, which led us to The Parrot – an eclectic little pub (complete with parrot) which made a perfect stop to share a bottle of wine. We had a delicious dinner at Cafe des Amis, and then made our way back to the hotel at the very respectable time of 8:30 PM. We were so exhausted from our day of wandering that we were fast asleep by 9 PM!

Unfortunately, today we weren’t so lucky with the weather. After breakfast, Kristy and I drove out to Margate and got our coffee fix on the waterfront, at the aptly named Cafe G. After heading back, we picked up Matthew and Emily then went for a Sunday Roast lunch at The Old Gate Inn. We stayed there most of the afternoon, and our time flew by trying to work out the rules to Backpacker – a card game which Mel and Ben graciously sent us for our birthdays. It’s complex (but fun)!

Overall, it was a great weekend, and that’s one more of England’s towns we can tick off the “to see” list. A huge thanks again to Matthew and Emily for showing us around!