UK, Day 9 - Canterbury and the drive home

Friday morning, we went and had our breakfast and checked out of the hotel. I looked online and saw that parking was £12 a day, so we got £36 in coins to pay for parking. We got to the car, and I went to pay. The machine said it was £23 a day. I didn't have that much in coins. I did have that much in bills, though. Luckily, there was an attendant, and he was able to take the bills. I was still pretty pissed that it was so much more than it said online. (However, if you remember from my post a couple of days ago, it was an entirely different carpark, and not the one that said £12 at all)

Anyway, we got out of there and on our way. We didn't have any wrong turns at all, and got out of the city in no time. we got to Canterbury in about an hour or so. I had looked up the parking here, too, and it was at least in the right place. There was almost no parking, though, since there was some sort of graduation that day, and the parking lot was filled with berobed individuals.

The Cathedral opened at 9:30, and the Canterbury Tales attraction opened at 10. So, we headed to the Cathedral first. The graduation was there, so the nave was closed. You could still see the grounds for the exact same price, but you couldn't go in the Cathedral at all. We decided against it, and just took a picture through the gate.


We headed down to Canterbury Tales, passing a rather large school group on the way. Three women were at the door trying to figure out when it opened, and we told them 10, but we were getting in line now to get in front of the school group. They said that was their school group. Oops. It's OK, they didn't seem offended at all. So, we waited. When it opened, we went in and the lady explained to us how it worked. As we went into each room, our audio tour would automatically start the story. We would hang out in that room until it told us to go into the next room. The first room was done up like we were in an inn. Chaucer narrated for us, and told us the premise of the book. Each room thereafter was either like we were following the pilgrims or like we were in one of the tales. It was really cool.  It worked out perfectly, too. As we left a room, the school group entered.

Since we hadn't gone to the Cathedral, we had some time to kill. We had seen a sign for the Canterbury Museum, so we went there. At the ticket counter, though, we saw a sign for a Roman museum. Max loves Romans, and it was his birthday, so we asked the lady where the Roman museum was. We went that way. We didn't find it. We were hungry, so we were looking for both the Roman Museum and some lunch. We saw a taco place, and Max was really excited, but they weren't open yet. We saw one of those places where little fish eat the dead skin off your feet, but they couldn't make our credit card to work. Max was quite disappointed by this time. We found a little museum in the spot where there was a hospital for pilgrims, and went in there. It was a little place, but pretty neat. It's now used to house poor people, and they were having a service. A friar came  out into the lobby while we were there, and Max got his picture taken with him. That made him happy, since Max has a penchant for all things monastic. We ended up getting lunch at the Cornwall Pasty Company and eating it in a nearby park.


After that, it was time to get to the Chunnel. We had reservations, so all we had to do was get there. It was pretty awesome, they have license plate cameras, so they knew who we were when we drove up. I had to enter the license plate on the reservation. We just drove up, and the machine said, Welcome Karen Poston! We stopped at the little service complex to use the restroom, and I got a soda. I had run out of Dews, so I had a headache.  (I had brought one for each day, but I had an extra one to take my pills in Cardiff, so I had run out a day early) But luck was on my side, and they had Dew in the vending machine! Dew is not something you usually find in the UK. One was turned around so I could see the ingredients, and, amazingly, it had no aspertame! The UK has a love affair with aspertame, so it was pretty amazing to run into a soda without it. It made me happy. It had a funny warning, though.

We drove the car onto the train, and took a nap for the 35 minutes of the trip. It was a lovely little break. I think all long distance travel should be accomplished this way. You get to still be in the privacy of your car during the trip, you still have your car to get around when you arrive at your destination, but you can sleep the whole trip. Lovely. When I'm God, I'm going to make a whole network of those trains. It will be very nice.

The interior of the train

 Here were our directions when we got off the train


The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We got caught in traffic in Belgium, of course. This time, it was Brussels. It added a good couple of hours to our trip. This wouldn't have mattered particularly, but Emma had a lock in at the Teen Center on base at 10pm. We also had to be careful of gas, since 24 hour gas stations are few and far between in Europe, and if we wanted to get our special gas prices, we had to use an Esso in Germany, not just any old gas station. That all worked out fine, though. We had a bit of nervous when we realized we needed gas at 8:30 pm, but thankfully, the Esso we found was still open.


We ended up getting home at just a bit past 9:30, and it takes 30 minutes to get to base. So, Em really quickly took a shower, packed, and hopped back in the car. Max got her to the lock in just a few minutes after 10.


It was an absolutely amazing trip, I'm so glad we went.


Emma says- (Hey look, I'm the one writing this by myself now!) The cathedral was pretty, but I'm sort of glad we didn't go in. I was kind of burned out on cathedrals by that time. When we got to the Canterbury Tales ride (it felt like we were in a really cool Disneyland) I was SO SO SO SO SO SO happy we were in FRONT of the school group. If we had been behind them then we would have heard the sound effects that weren't on the audiotour and that would have been huge spoilers =( Mom was so happy to have her Dew. It was an awesome trip =)