Sunday, August 16, 2009

A Day in England

Today we woke up nice and early and took a one hour tube ride into London to join our tour. We were taken first of all to Leeds Castle, a small but very pretty castle that changed hands a million times but was a favourite home of King Henry VIII. We had the dubious honour of drinking a "meade" toast to the king himself. It's the 500th anniversary of his coronation.

Then we had a tour of Canterbury Cathedral, a very lovely and VERY old church (built in 1077). There were dozens of alcoves and chapels, and a bunch of dead people in the crypt and in the middle of the cathedral. Thomas Beckett was murdered there. "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

Next stop was the White Cliffs of Dover. More of a quick photo stop, we didn't spend more than half an hour there. But we went down to the beach and Anton was tickled pink to dip his toes into the English Channel.

The next part of the tour included a giant catamaran ride from the O2 (where Michael Jackson was supposed to perform, and where the Prime Meridian is) to Embarkment Pier. We challenged ourselves to find a cute little pub we ran across 3 years ago, the Sherlock Holmes pub. This time we went for the real British fare - Anton had shepherd's pie and Frankie had bangers and mash, both of which were quite good. Best of all was the treacle sponge we had for dessert - yum yum yum! The best gluten I ever had!

After supper we hung around Trafalgar Square people watching and making some new friends. He sleeps on his side. We asked.

It was a fun day, now we are off to bed and meeting our tour group in the morning at the airport.

The funniest thing so far was when we were just about to board our plane in Toronto and received an email from our tour leader about what to pack. We sent him a few emails complaining that we didn't have any "trousers". We're Canadian! This is warm for us! In fact, and I am not joking, we were the ONLY ones on the tour today and the only ones on the tube wearing shorts. Even though it was 25 out.

We'll try to update our blog regularly for any of you who are interested in following our adventures.

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