I made up for yesterday when I awoke for this day by getting up at about 7:30 or so in the morning. The reason for this early rising was quite simple, it was field trip day, which meant going to the lovely areas of Leeds Castle and Canterbury city and cathedral. Now for those of you familiar enough with England to realise something was amiss with this last statement, providing that someone at the school did not invent transporter technology, it would be unlikely for me to go to two places as far apart as Leeds and Canterbury for a day trip on the same day. Perhaps this feat could be done, but in my mind it is also highly unlikely as Leeds is in Yorkshire near the Scottish border in the northwest and Canterbury is near Dover (which as near to any English city borders France) in Kent in the southeast. What I am leading to is no I did not go to Yorkshire but rather I went to Leeds Castle off of Leeds village in Kent and then later on went to Canterbury. Now how great was it to be starting on the same road that Chaucer himself began on (near the pub as well I think) to go and make my own day pilgrimage to Canterbury where the good archbishop died? Pretty great, that’s how great it was.
Anyway, I got to the school where we boarded the coach, and as I did so, a nice girl named Kassandra (I think) sat next to me, but upon noticing that the seat before us was also free, she chose to sit there instead. Then we went down to Leads Castle and upon the journey there I tried to sleep, but failing that, I read my new book on Jack the Ripper. It was quite good, and very interesting which of course kept my attention. When we arrived at Leeds Castle, the castle itself was not visible from where we parked (nor had we seen it on the road), but it was very pretty and green out even though we are in the midst of Autumn. We parked near a place where there were many peafowl and particularly notable was the white peafowl that we walked by a unique zoological find of which I felt a picture was necessary. Walking up the winding but beautiful path to the lake upon which our pending castle sat, we also came across some black swans which also begged (in their own swan-like fashion) for some pictures to be taken. After this, we came what has been popularly described as the most beautiful castle in the world, which my tour guide and I reckon to be an accurate statement. It was very charming, quite small so it was not ostentatious in the least, though at one point in its history it was a royal castle, meaning one that belonged to the crown and not some aristocrat of Kent.
We explored the castle, which was quite lovely really, and there were naturally not many other sightseers there, as it was in the midst of Autumn. It was a bit chilly, but nothing unmanageable. We explored the castle which had been made to be restored to its former days of glory of monarchy (it was sold for private use during the reign of Henry VIII). This was on the ground floor and as we went up, we found the lodgings of a wealthy American heiress from the 1920's. This kind woman was wealthy enough and philanthropic enough (or purist enough) to restore the castle, and used the top floor for she and her daughters to live in. It was quite the thing to be there and I particularly liked the setting of the castle against the lake. Also there was the dog collar museum, which I was never aware of such a thing, but I have now been to and through it. We also saw an aviary where there were many birds in large and exotic cages of a different time. There was one bird in particular named Oscar who was very intelligent, not only could he talk by allegedly saying ‘hello’ in a thick Kentish accent, but also he would dance for us and swing and so forth, quite the entertaining little chap. There was apparently also a hedge maze that looked very neat with a grotto in the centre, but I had not enough time to go in, though I wanted to.
We left there early enough and took a short ride to the city of Canterbury. On the way, our guide told us the story of Thomas Becket, which I already knew, but seemed like a good thing to hear before reaching the religious capitol of Britain. Once in town we walked through and found the impressive cathedral that Canterbury offered. It had a very high steeple and everything else to it. Inside it was very impressive and the place where Thomas Becket had been slain was pointed out to us, which was a bit of a creepy feeling. This was only compounded by the experience of going into the Norman style crypt below where it was very dark, dreary and spacious. It gave me indescribable feelings to be there, perhaps because I was feeling the history of the place set over me. Perhaps it was because the atmosphere commanded one to feel a certain way, not bad per se, but calm perhaps or maybe even a bit macabre. Either way this was certainly a good place to go to see and experience some of the immense history that makes up the history of England and therefore a good portion of the world.
Before actually entering the cathedral, we sat down at a nearby pub and got something to eat. This pub was named Hobgoblin, and it was filled with obvious locals. The gentlemen next to our table were chain smoking which is always extremely repellent but the food we ate was good and they left about halfway through our meal. I ate a good chicken dish, the first I recall having had since living here. After we went through and finished the cathedral, I bought some candy from an open air market they had down the main street. I got a bag of what I thought was some sort of dot covered gummy candy, but turned out to be licorice, nasty! I also bought a bar of a toffee flapjack which was incredibly good (by the way flapjack here does not mean pancake but rather a shortbread sort of cookie or biscuit if you will). We then returned to London, and after getting some sleep on the way back, I also read more of my book about Jack the Ripper. When we returned, I went home, and hung out for a while when I was later convinced by my roommates Erika and Seamus to go to a pub on Piccadilly Circus later on.
At about 21:30 Seamus and I left to meet Erika in Piccadilly, when we arrived there we saw her sitting at the Eros statue with what only could be described as three London punks, mohawk, flannel trousers, chains and all. We met up with her, and looking particularly preppy that night it must have been a sight to see us meeting them. She needed some more time with them, as she was taking pictures of them. So to entertain ourselves, Seamus and I went into the Virgin mega store and looked around. I bought another Edward Elgar CD, but may I mention that the classical music selection there was huge and far too expensive as one might guess. When we returned, she had apparently finished and she went to call some Argentinian hoser who she was supposed to meet presumably for some kind of date. He had apparently given her the wrong number because she could not get through to him on the line he had provided. We then went to a pub a bit up the road, which was loaded with old people and quite packed as I recall too. When we went in, Seamus was gracious enough to cover me, but the daft policy of no hats existed at this (in my mind already) unfavourable place. I was ordered by the bouncers at the door to remove my hat, and I asked them very clearly and perhaps obnoxiously ‘Why?!’ They did not reply at which point I repeated my question and they repeated their recourse of silence. I then went inside with my hat in my pocket as I did not want to reject Seamus’ generosity. The whole time I had an uneasy feeling and certainly did not enjoy the place I found myself.
Seamus also ordered and bought me a drink of Carling, which was alright, but nothing spectacular. We then basically hung out for a while and watched the band that played live, it was also okay, but nothing in my mind spectacular. In fact, on this point, I was postulating that very day about how much live music generally fails to impress me, and that it seemed pointless to pay so much money to see such things. My main complaint with live music, which is all the more aggravated by bars and pubs is it is simply too loud and not that entertaining visually. I say this because as I see it, all bands tend to do is hop around the stage and strum their fingers over guitars, and to this I say, boring. Oh well, that is my little diatribe, the only exception on occasion for this little feeling I have is at classical concerts where you can see all of the bows on the violins moving in unison, but that soon grows tedious to me as well. Anyway, after we got back home, I soon went to sleep to prepare for what was surely to be the most awesome day in the history of my life to date...