A bunch of days rolled into one post

So Michal is napping and I am forced to catch up on all the blogging we have failed to do in the last few days. Yippee!!

Let's see, where were we? Oh right. Thursday: We checked out of our hostel early and rushed to central London to catch an early bus to Canterbury. We ended up making it there just in time to catch the first bus out (after some really creative distributing of tasks between the two of us if I do say so myself). When we got to Canterbury it was pretty overcast and windy, a little drizzly, but not full on raining. good. We made our way over to the Cathedral (because that's really the only good thing to see in Canterbury) and lo and behold, we see a sign saying that the Cathedral is closed to visitors on that day because of some International Convention of Bishops. That figures because it just would not fit in with the theme of this trip if we had a full day where everything goes right.

So we couldn't go to the Cathedral so we consulted the Let's Go Britain tourbook that has seriously saved our lives this trip, and decided to head to the Museum of Canterbury instead. It was a cute little museum that told the history of the town, including the story of Thomas Becket, the martyr who became St. Thomas of Canterbury who drew all the pilgrims to Canterbury in the middle ages (including the fictional characters in Chaucer's terribly exciting story The Canterbury Tales). Since it was such a small museum there weren't really very many artifacts but it was informative nonetheless. Next we headed over to Westgate, the first sight of many of the pilgrims coming to the city. It welcomed the pilgrims but was also used as a jail in later years and a watchtower during WWII because it's so high above the city (people would stand there and watch for German planes and sound the air raid alarm if any were spotted). There was a little museum inside and since Michal and I were the only ones there, the nice man who worked there showed us around and took us way up to the top of the tower where most people don't get to go. We got a beautiful view of the city and the Cathedral--it was quite nice. The man was very knowledgeable and told us a lot of stuff we didn't know (i think he had a crush on Michal because he kept following us around. it was cute).

This was kind of all there was to do in Canterbury so we grabbed a bus over to Dover. After stopping in a grocery store to pick up the essentials (a baguette, cherry tomatoes, and carrots), we started the trek up to the Dover Castle. It was quite a climb, but the view when we got to the top was absolutely breathtaking. We found a picnic table in a spot that overlooked the ocean and ate our picnic lunch (amid the horizontal drizzle....the wind was ridiculous) then looked around the old Naval watchpoint on top of the hill. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see France, but apparently on a clear day it's quite visible (only about 20 miles away, across the channel). From atop this tower we could also see the beautiful white cliffs that Dover is famous for. Next we walked around area, looking at the structures surrounding the castle, including the old Roman lighthouse and Saxon church and medieval tunnels. Upon entering the actual castle I once again attempted to get Michal to play along with my princess fantasy, attempting to convince her how perfectly she fits as Belle (even going so far as to tell her how each of her friends corresponds to one of the characters in the movie) but alas, she refused to join in the fun. So I had to pretend to be Aurora on my own. I was constantly humming princess tunes as we walked through the castle. Now the castle: oh man, the castle was amazing!!! There were endless corridors and passageways to wander through, it was unbelievable. We had a jolly old time exploring all the castle had to offer. When we were done with that we walked all the way around the castle atop the battlements surrounding it, before heading back down to the bus station because the castle was closing and we needed to catch our bus back to London.

When we got back to London that night we had about an hour in the bus station before taking another bus down to Brighton to see Hazel. And that's where we spent Thursday night.

Friday: After waking up quite late because we were all exhausted, the three of us (Me, Michal, and Hazel) headed down to the beachfront to get some real food. It was pretty much the first real meal Michal and I had had on this trip and Hazel really wanted real meat (after eating college food for the past 4 weeks) so we found a little pub and ate some delicious lunch. I was forced to order fish and chips, which wasn't awful, but i definitely will not be eating those ever again. After eating we walked down to the beach and just laid there relaxing for about an hour before heading back to home to the University of Sussex (where Hazel is studying for the summer). It was a pretty uneventful and relaxing day but it was definitely needed.

Saturday: Since Hazel had left the previous night for Amsterdam, Michal and I were on our own again. We headed down to the beach around noon, had a picnic on the beach (constantly terrified that the seagulls surrounding us were going to swarm, so we literally had to take a bit of our sandwhich and then hide it under our sweatshirt while we were chewing so the seagulls wouldn't see it and get any ideas). After lying on the beach for a while reading and listening to music we walked down the peir and looked at all the touristy things that they had. I was amazed at how ridiculously expensive stuff was--the tokens for the rides and games were 1 pound each and some rides required 4 tokens, so that's $8 for one ride on a little 30 second long roller coaster! Not okay! Sorry future children of mine, we're going on vacation to Yemen or somewhere where the dollar is better than the local currency so you can divide prices by 10 instead of double them.

We wandered around the beach for a while longer and then headed into a pub to watch the Liverpool vs Krakow game. The first half was SUPER dull, Liverpool was playing bad, and there were all these players we didn't know playing and the boys weren't wearing their names on their jerseys so it was kind of a sad experience. So we left after the first half, and now we're back at the dorm.

It's been a good couple of days. We definitely need to recouperate and catch up on sleep. It's been an amazing trip but we're exhausted so it's nice to have a few days to breathe before coming home on Monday.
Friday: