Canterbury to Dover and Back Again

We began our day with a "traditional English breakfast" of orange juice, ham, banger, beans, tomato, egg, white toast, butter, a selection of jam, jelly, and honey, plus the ever-so-welcome pot of tea; Glen had pressed coffee. : ) The kids ate up their scrambled eggs and toast with their tea and orange juice so quickly, you'd think they'd walked across England the day before!

Off we walked to the train station...
Canterbury's tall trees were such a new sight for us. They led the way to Dane John Park where we all let loose for a bit. Of course the slide came out of a castle!









Above the play area was a monument, so we climbed up to see what it was for, but we came down soon after because the wind was so strong I thought we'd be blown right off!
You can see a picture of C standing half way up the hill to the monument. You could see the entire city from the top. The two horizontal pics are left and right views of the park below.













The picture with Glen, Julie, and our kids shows them on the bridge to Canterbury Castle with the monument seen through the tree on the right. The train takes you to this bridge, which takes you to the wall of Canterbury Castle, which leads you to the Castle House Bed and Breakfast, right next to Canterbury Castle - amazing!



Getting to Dover Castle (Dover, Kent in England) was a treck, but well worth it! It's jam packed full of history from so many wars and invasions. It sparked our wonderment to study WWI and WWII, and to learn more about the underground tunnels, some of which were only discovered recently. We took a guided tour and learned so much more than if we'd just walked around and tried to figure it all out ourselves. I don't have any pics of the underground because taking pictures is not allowed.




This pic, with the moat leading toward the ocean, is one of my favorites. After four months of living in London, seeing the sea stopped me in my tracks. All the way up the hill I smelled its scent and heard the gulls, even a dingy! Strangly, the cold, wet breeze didn't seem salty at all.


The blue glow around the window was cool. There were so many stair cases simply leading to windows and even large flat areas in front of them like the shallow one you see here.

How cool is this circular staircase?!? I'm amazed at how many stair cases were circular and also wide and roomy. The craftmanship was amazing.






Standing on top of the Keep, I shot this pic of the Church at Dover Castle.


To give you an idea of how incredibly windy it was, take a look at Q and C. I'm holding my camera as steady as I can and trying not to get blown away by the wind at the same time. Q and C could have flown off if they had umbrellas! I could barely keep my balance.

I love this inner corner of the castle. Gorgeous scenes like this one are all over the castle. Look to the left and there's another small doorway. Why on earth were they so small?

Dover Castle's visiting hours were over and we were politely lead out. We had quite an uphill climb back to the bus stop, then it started raining! Here we are "thumbing it" because the bus hadn't come for over an hour. It was too dark to walk down the mountain/hill, so we just kept hoping the bus would come soon!
It was getting dark quickly, so while we could see our feet, we headed down the hill towards the train station. Wouldn't ya know it? The bus came! We jumped on, walked to the train station, rode from Dover back to Canterbury, then walked to a Fish N Chips restaraunt for dinner. It was Q's birthday, and all he hoped for was to eat fish and chips today. Eating at The Deep Blue was a brilliant idea! It was a fabulous day.