From Columbia to Atlanta to London Gatwick = 14hours of airports, airplanes, and luggage. And that’s just the beginning.
I’ll skip all the “Oh flying on planes if fun but uncomfortable” blah blah blah crap and head right to the wonderful awesome that is carrying 80lbs of luggage all over the greater London area. One word will sum that up: LAME.
We finally get to our B&B in Canterbury around 1130am and then waited a bit so the staff could clean our room. I’d had enough sitting so I decided to take a solo walking tour of Canterbury. Jason stayed at the B&B reading some trashy English tabloid which he said was pretty funny.
I wandered around for a bit and then came back. We unpacked some, got clean cause OH MY GOD we felt like we’d been shoved into our luggage and stuffed under the plane with dirty farm animals for ten days.
Then I took Jason to the Wychwood Hobgoblin pub right up the road from our B&B. We both started with the Wychwood Hobgoblin which, of course, is 10x better on draught than it is in a bottle. We ordered our first food in England. Apparently the Hobgoblin pub has a Thai chef so there was a majority of Thai food on the menu. I got chicken satay and veggie spring rolls with a crazy awesome sweet chili sauce. Jason got the Hob Club Sandwich which was just a ham & swiss sandwich but with the always heart healthy addition of two runny fried eggs on top, all served with fries. Not chips. These were plain old crinkle cut French fries.
The food was awesome and we finished the meal with Strongbow Cider on draught. Yet again better than in the bottle.
Apparently the dehydrating effect of flying and jet lag made me the cheapest date in the world because I was completely and utterly SMASHED after that. I was so drunk I could barely talk. It was kind of silly. So we came back to the B&B with the plan to only sleep about 30mins.
We ended up sleeping for almost 2hrs and were awakened by a group of ‘pilgrims’ singing Kyrie Eleason on their way to Canterbury Cathedral.
It was really hard for me to get up and going but once we did we toured the town, making our way along St. Dunstans street toward the Cathedral. That church is huge and old and so beautiful. We saw the pilgrims that woke us up, all carrying flags from the little towns they were from. About 40% of the church is under construction, as they are renovating and restoring the original stonework and medieval stained glass on the south east side. This unfortunately meant we couldn’t see the famous Occuli on the cathedral but it was great to read about the conservation efforts. Made me wish I was a stained glass expert so I could work on it too!
We wandered all over until we were hungry again then decided to drink first. We made our way back to our B&B and right up the road there’s a pub called The Unicorn. We went in and ordered a Kronenburg 1664 and I got a Master Brew, a Kentish ale that was surprisingly like a Newcastle. We sat out back in their beer garden and chatted about the gorgeous weather, stupid pigeons and ancient beers, finishing up with pints of Ringwood and Deuchars IPA.
A note on the beer: I had known in advance the beer wouldn’t be as cold as we are used to it in the States but I didn’t really believe that it’d be room temp. Well let me tell you, it’s pretty damn warm. Not hot, but not cold by any stretch of the imagination. It’s like when you take to long to drink a beer on a hot summer day and it gets all flat and tepid. It tasted fabulous mind you, but I’m just not used to it yet. You can get some beers here ice cold and the tap will say that. Jason’s Kronenburg was frigid and most Guinness taps say Ice Cold on them. Otherwise it’s all warm beer from here on out.
Our last meal of the day was authentic Fish and Chips from an eatery right next to our B&B. It was SO MUCH food it was ridiculous. Next time we’ll only order one and share. We got the cod and it was amazing.
We didn’t really do jack crap on our first day but travel and drink. That’s the best way to start a holiday I guess. more to come soon.
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