New Thing #81 - L/S/I, Day 5 - Canterbury/Whitstable

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

While still in the UK, we decided to go outside the city of London to Canterbury and Whitstable, on the Southeastern tip of the UK. Aaron is originally from Whitstable, so we would be making a pit stop at his mom's house for dinner. We woke up at a reasonable hour and headed to the train station in Blackheath with Melissa. She had taken the day off of work to be our tour guide of the English countryside. A quick breakfast of a sausage roll and apple danish, and then we purchased our tickets for our first stop of Canterbury. For whatever reason tickets were 4 for the price of 2. Score! We like discounts. They really do have a nice public transportation system over there. 

It took about an hour to the Rochester station where we changed trains and had another hour or so ride to our final destination. It was nice to not be walking in the rain. Or just not walking at all. Only three days of our trip had passed and we had done nothing but walk. Relaxing and napping on the train was heavenly.

Our departure point.

Enjoying train ride #1 and reading the paper.

We eventually passed into the county of Kent, which is the garden county of England. It was a beautiful countryside. We also talked about how Aaron was either a "Man of Kent" or a "Kentish Man". Apparently it had something to do with what part of Kent you grew up in. Sadly, we forgot to ask Aaron later, so I may never know. :(

Sleepy kitties on the second train.

Once we arrived in Canterbury, I was smitten. It was absolutely adorable, and I never wanted to leave. Neither did Nikki. She said that if she ever went missing, she had probably moved to Canterbury to open a little shop. They had fancy shops and little mom and pop places, and I loved it all. After the hectic go go go of London, this was such a nice change of pace. We stopped at Strada, an Italian place for lunch and I got their "lunch box": a margherita pizza with a salad and orange soda. Not bad! (Oh, and it wasn't actually a real orange soda. It was more like seltzer water with some orange flavoring thrown in. So, the complete opposite of Sunkist. Bummer.)

Castle-like structure in Canterbury.

Wall around the city. I'm not sure if it went the entire way around, but we walked over it from the train station to get to all the shops.

Interesting name for a night club.

Fun with mazes.

So cute!

Street market.

Can you imagine learning to drive in that thing?

Loving it.

Quick view of Canterbury Cathedral.

I love that the streets were mostly pedestrian only. Occasionally, there would be a car come through, but it wasn't very often.

They're everywhere...

Entrance to the Canterbury Cathedral grounds.

This cost more money. We opted not to go in, but I did get some pictures of it.

It sure did look pretty.

Pizza. Much better than the lasagna from last night!

Orange soda.

Better looking salad. It even had some flamingo meat in it.

I should also mention that at the restaurant for lunch, we were the youngest people in the whole place, not counting the servers. I'm not sure if was a retirement home hang out or if Wednesdays are senior discount day, but there were lots of older folks in this place!

We didn't get to stay in Canterbury very long, because we still had to travel to Whitstable. We did stop at a few places for souvenirs and also at a fudge shop because it had started to rain (go figure). I miraculously managed to not buy anything, despite the delicious aromas emanating from within. We did, however, sample some! It was pretty tasty.

Making chocolate banana fudge.

There was no train from Canterbury to Whitstable, but we did finally get to ride on a double decker bus. We found seats at the top in the very front which was a very odd perspective. But it gave us the chance to see some adorable little villages on our way to the coast. I have no idea what little villages we drove through, but I enjoyed it immensely.

Lots of buses....very close together.

You can kinda see the coastline.

After arriving in sleepy Whitstable, we first went to Whitstable Castle where Melissa's sister-in-law worked. Ironically, her name is also Melissa. It wasn't an enormous castle, but it was quaint and adorable. You will see that I say adorable alot in reference to today. I just had a wonderful time, and everything was so perfect. The castle is open for free tours and a nice older gentlemen named Rick showed us the sights. He seemed so excited to tell the history of the castle and I think his explanation went on longer than they normally do. We didn't really care, since he was so effing adorable.

We walked through this entrance to get to the castle grounds.

Not sure what kind of tree this was, but it had pretty flowers.

Not really what I was expecting when I thought of a castle.

These seniors were playing a game called Bowls. I have no idea how it's played, but apparently they are required to wear all white and roll little balls around. 

They even continued playing in the rain. I didn't get a photo of them with their white hoods up, because it looked pretty racist.

I suppose it does look a bit castle-like. I just always imagine castles as being much larger.

Rick went on and on about the castle, but I honestly can't remember much of what he said. It was pretty though, and would make a nice spot for a wedding.

These wall designs had special significance. Can't remember a single one.

Looking toward the coast line from the balcony.

Bowls game.

Once our tour of the castle was over, Melissa 2 (the sister, not the wife) drove us to Aaron's mom's house to pick up her son, Douglas, who was wonderfully adorable and British and said things like "mummy and deddy". He was around 3 or 4, and had the cutest British accent. We went for a walk around Whitstable, including the docks and the shoreline. It was like a ghost town. I don't know if everyone was at work, at a pub or just out of town, because there wasn't a soul in sight. It was eerily quiet, except for Douglas's chatter. Melissa said that tourist season hadn't started yet, but once it did, the town would be bustling with much more activity.

A....B....Sea....I "sea" what they did there!

Fish market. It smelled exactly how you would expect a fish market to smell.

Had to.

Lots of boats, but no people!

I imagine this gets much more business in the warmer months. It was a bit too cold for windsurfing today!

I've never had oysters. Eating them raw freaks me the eff out.

Houses by the sea.

But what if he doesn't tell me not to?

Fancy door knockers.

Our tour didn't take very long (Whitstable isn't very big), so naturally we ended up in a pub. This time, it was called the Duke of Cumberland. I don't really remember what time of day it was, but there were less than a dozen other people inside the pub. It was very spacious and had a homey feel to it, so we settled down to shoot the breeze while Douglas entertained us with his British antics. I really wish I had gotten video of him to share, but I thought it would be rude to videotape this stranger's son!

I liked the name of my beer: Oranjeboom! It was pretty tasty too.

Nikki's baby beer, Brenda's mama beer, and my daddy beer.

We pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Their sign for the bathroom. I shall now say "I'm going to use the thunderbox" anytime I need to go to the bathroom!

There were interesting posters on the wall. This looks like Usher as Jesus.

Little Richard is watching you!

This is what happens when I leave my camera sitting on the table when I'm in the thunderbox.

Camera stealers = duck faces

So ganster.

The other perk to our trip out to Whitstable was that Aaron's mom Pauline wanted to cook us a traditional British dinner: a Sunday roast. And this was the BEST meal I ate the entire time I was in England. It even beat out our curry from our first night. Our group included Aaron (who had stopped off after work) and Melissa, Aaron's son from his first marriage, Michael, Aaron's sister and her husband and their son Douglas, and Aaron's mom Pauline.

She was so sweet and went all out for us: roast, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, "runaway" beans (aka green beans), and yorkshire pudding all covered in GRAVY! (Yorkshire pudding is kind of like a roll shaped like a muffin, but a completely different consistency than the rolls we're used to. It's difficult to describe. But, just think of it as roll to sop up gravy.) We each started to fill our plates with meats and veggies, and I was wondering how I was going to eat all of this. It looked great, but seemed a bit dry.

Then came the gravy. A big vat of liquid deliciousness. Each of our British friends doused their entire plate in the stuff. Not to be outdone, the three of us followed suit and dug in to a fabulous meal. Now, this dinner was slightly different than what we Americans are used to. #1 There were no napkins. Not a single one was brought out or sitting on the table. None of us wanted to ask for one, so we just went with it. Fortunately, we were able to keep from messing ourselves. #2 NO ONE drank a single drop of anything with the meal. No water, no soda, no tea. Nothing. Again, we didn't want to ask, since it didn't seem like the normal thing to do. Thank God for the gravy to grease the ol' esophagus. It was kind of weird though, once we were done with the meal, they got up to get stuff to drink. I wonder what the big deal is with drinking while eating?

After dinner Pauline pulled out her dessert, some kind of mascarpone tower mixed with fruits and nuts covered in Swiss rolls and frozen. I've never seen anything like it before, but it was awesome! They even brought out cream to pour on top. They sure do like their sauces over there. I guess that's to compensate for the lack of beverages. 

The whole time we were eating, we found it difficult to keep up with the conversation around us. Yes, they were speaking English, but with the accents and their own phrases and idiosyncrasies, it was a hell of a time trying to figure out what the hell they were all saying. We just kind of sat there and stared, with stupid grins on our faces the whole time.

We spent another few hours sitting around talking about a variety of things with the group, including the wonders of cricket. I've never seen a game, nor do I understand any of the rules, other than what I've seen in Bend it Like Beckham. Apparently cricket games last for 5 days, and they take breaks for tea. The game isn't over until both teams have batted twice. There are wickets that they try to knock time. Every member of each team must get out before the other team gets to bat. One player could end up batting all day if he never gets out. Holy crap, no wonder it lasts so long. I know there's more to the rules, but we were just stuck on the fact that a single game lasts FIVE DAYS. Geez, no wonder Aaron said it was utterly boring. He said that if you go to a match you can leave and have a few pints at the pub and then come back and likely nothing has happened. 

Crazy Brits and their weird games.

We talked about "soccer" and the fact that two UK teams would be playing in St. Louis while we were gone. We told them how the game sold out in less than 20 minutes. We asked if they got that excited when American football came to London. Aaron said that the fans usually got unruly because they didn't understand our game and would start being obnoxious in the seats to pass the time. I'm not sure that's any different than some of our very own NFL fans.

Watching Douglas play. He was too cute for words.

He adored his "Auntie Melissa" and was pretty sweet on Brenda too.

Unfortunately, our lovely day in the English countryside came to an end and we had to head back for our final night in England. We said goodbye to their lovely hospitality and hopped into the back of Aaron's car for the hour-long ride home. Except, the back of Aaron's car didn't have any seats. His car is a work car and he uses it to haul equipment around, so it's flat in the back. That made for a lovely trip home. It wasn't too terrible, except my legs fell asleep a few times. But, at least it was free and it didn't require a bus and two trains to get home! He was also only going around 55-60 mph, so it wasn't too harrowing.

I couldn't believe our time in London was already over. We seriously had a whirlwind tour, and probably tried to do too much in the little amount of time we had. I was really ready to head to Scotland though! When I first got home, I told everyone that I was really disappointed in London and likely would never want to go back. Now that I've had some time to think about it, I realized I was being too quick to discount it. We tried to do too much, and it caught up with us. Because of that, when the weather was crap, we had to stick it out and continue with our plan or we wouldn't have seen what we wanted to. If we had had more time to spend, and slightly better weather, I think we would have enjoyed ourselves more. I would go back, as long as I had the proper amount of time to see it, and I went when it was MUCH warmer!

Random things/thoughts about England. You might not get some of these, but they're just designed to remind B, N and I of some fun times.

1. Naked shit.

2. Shave my boat.

3. Creepstar by Heather Jones

4. Keep your knickers on.

5. Brenda never listened to me. She said nearly the exact same thing shortly after I'd already said it.

6. We were almost always the only ones eating in the restaurants. Everyone else was just drinking.

7. Rush Hour Crush and Match.com/tube

8. "This is how I'm going."

9. Best meal: Hands down, Aaron's mom's roast dinner.

10. Why do all the faucets have a hot water faucet and a cold water faucet? My right hand freezes while my left hand burns alive. I must look like I'm having a seizure when I'm trying to wash my hands and dart them back and forth between each faucet.

11. Brits where WHATEVER. THE. F*CK. THEY. WANT. And what they want to wear is usually weird as hell and makes absolutely no sense.

12. London streets are absolutely bonkers. I know how to use a roundabout, but they have roundabouts inside roundabouts. Figure that shit out.

13. Ye Old Stompe.

14. "Who's that lay-dee?"

15. Queueing

16. Way out

17. "Something creepy!"

18. "All 4 seasons in a day."

19. "We will not be schmuzzled."

20. Stawp sine/SAW-ker/GAR-bage

21. Poop shirt/poop pants

22. Pram (British word for stroller) and No Prams on the escalators

23. Nikki + Heather = Food Twins.

24. Totes adorbs.