Canterbury Trip!

Thursday we don't have classes and this week we had a day trip planned with the whole group. We left at 8 am and headed to Canterbury, which is about a two hour drive outside of the city. The city is known historically for being the destination point of religious pilgrimages to worship at the Canterbury Cathedral. We arrived around ten am and made it for our tour of the cathedral at ten thirty. I am loving all of these tours we are taking because they are mostly done by older people, usually cute little grandpas that LOVE what they are teaching us about. This time we got an adorable old man that was so excited about the Canterbury Cathedral. He told us a bunch of very interesting stories and also a lot of random facts. We were loving it until an hour into it when we were still only half way through and starving. Another hour later he was still going, bless his heart, and we were all sneaking bites of our lunches. I will say that I learned a lot and really appreciated his great tour, it just dragged on for a little longer than expected. The cathedral was BEAUTIFUL. The architecture was amazing and the stain glass windows were so colorful! After we finished our tour we headed out to eat our lunch and walk around the town. It was a very fun place to be with many cool shops and street performers. It was mostly made up of cobblestone streets so that was fun to walk around and see.
Once we had finished lunch we met up with the group again to go through a museum type place called "Canterbury Tales". You had a little listening device and a man told stories as you moved from one room to the next. The rooms were really creepy though and had mannequins dressed up as beggars in them. The stories actually ended up being a little racy with some dirty jokes and I was in a group of 7 with the professors four boys and two other girls. One of the boys is a brand new return missionary (he joined us last week from his mission) and another is 11. Luckily the 11 year old got a tape that was "child friendly" but I kept checking to see what his was saying. The oldest child thing makes me watch out for the little kids more I guess and this little boy reminds me so much of Dawson haha I love it. When we came out the professor and his wife were looking a little shell shocked haha you never know what you are getting into, even at a "museum". It did give us all something to laugh at though! After our great little tour we walked around town some more then headed home.
We had to hurry and get ready so that we could be out the door for the Harry Potter midnight showing by 7:30, we went to the 9pm showing of HP7 part 1 that was included. Wow, we are really sounding like nerds! It was great though and the movie was amazing! It was a great ending to my favorite books. I remember starting to read those when I was 11 (same age as Harry in book one) I can't believe that was so long ago! I will say the Epilogue was a smidge cheesy with Harry's salt and pepper hair and Rons big belly. But, all in all it was a fabulous movie and the midnight showings are always the best. We finished the movie around 2:30 am and were all the way out at a theater near Wimbeldon. Thanks to some great googling and navigating skills Catie and I were able to get us home via the night bus, we were pretty proud of ourselves. We didn't end up getting home until 4 am though and were up again at 7. It has been a LONG day.
Enjoy the pictures!