26Oct2008: Day 153: Canterbury and Clever Girl

Today I went with my parents when to Canterbury Cathedral for morning worship. I never get to go far like that because I have to get Teri to her church which occurs in the afternoon, so, it has been nice to have an extra car around such that we can go to cathedrals. We actually wanted to go to a different cathedral, but the next closest one was in London (Westminster or St. Paul's) and while it would have been very nice to go there, it is much too long of a trip by train and my parents are tired out from their week on their own travelling the north of the country. The said that they really like Coventry out of all their places, but they went to Cambridge and York as well. The thing my mother found the most interesting was the variety of flushing mechanisms that are available in the various Bed & Breakfasts that they stayed at. The most notable one being the one hooked up to a "clapper"....no kidding, they had to clap their hands to flush. Classic.

Anyway, so we went to the Cathedral and it was a very nice service. We got into the front row of the Choir or Quire, The congregation actually is split in two and facing across from one another and the priest and such walk down in the middle...it was different. The organist there is amazing and has been playing there since 1988. He played quite a long postlude that we sat and listened to, the we walked around the Cathedral for a while looking at the tombs again.

When we left, it was raining quite a bit and we walked around in the area for quite some time looking for a place to have lunch. My parents have had it lucky since they have been here with much of the time being bright sun shining days.

There are some ruins around the Cathedral, which were likely the abbey, but there wasn't anything saying that was the case. There are numerous arches and old columns holding up nothing. Another abbey destroyed by King Henry VIII during the founding of the Church of England when he broke from the Roman Church. I looked online and it is not St. Augustine's abbey which is actually outside of the town. We'll have to get down there at some point. In 597AD, St. Augustine brought back Christianity to southern England after the Romans abandoned England. He was the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

There are quite a lot of small shops and places to eat just about everywhere you walk, so we finally settled on a place, which was basically a Denny's-like diner place. Dad and I had over cooked fish fry and chips while mother had a ham and cheese baguette. As you may know Fish and Chips are big here, but Baguettes are really big over here too. It is a french bread that is actually about half the diameter of normal french bread and they put whatever sandwich meat you may want and then they put it in a giant George Foreman grill like thing that is hot on both sides and squashes the thing down. It is a nice sandwich when it is done. You don't have to get it heated, but it is nice that way.

Teri went to her own church today and stayed with Makenna. Tomorrow is Makenna's second birthday and she is turning into quite a manipulator...Teri wrote this, before her brother Jake called and she plopped the laptop on me to finish:

Makenna is becoming the queen of excuses. Today before Sacrament meeting, we were sitting and she found her diapers and changing pad in the backpack that I bring, and she kept asking to have her diaper changed. All this so that she could get out of sitting in Sacrament meeting. She wanted to go play the piano. I told her that I would change her diaper but that we were going right back in. She immediately started to run the opposite way. I corralled her in and we went back and sat.

She was pretty good after that. She took the small bag of crayons and shook them so they went flying everywhere. Her and Hannah colored together for a bit but they both got bored with that. They started standing at the doors and pressing their faces against it like they were prisoners. Then they shared some cereal and shared toys to pass the time. As soon as church was over, Makenna ran to the piano to play. Grandma Jones thinks that she'll be a natural at playing the piano because she puts both hands on the keys to play not just one finger. They certainly need piano players here at church! But I don't think she'll learn before we go.