Saturday, May 11th: Dover & Canterbury

Today we headed out to explore the towns of Dover and Canterbury. As the two towns are quite near each other via train, we were able to have enough time to explore both. 

It was quite a chilly morning when we left Regent's College at 7 AM, and it certainly was more cold when we got to Dover, as it is on the Coast facing the English Channel. We walked through the town and headed towards the beach, so we could see the Cliffs of Dover. These cliffs are extremely famous of being extremely tall and stark white, as they are made entirely of chalk. Sadly, it was quite grey, misty, and rainy, so we couldn't see the Cliffs as clearly as we had hoped. However, we still tried to make the most out of our experience, as seen in our classmate, Melanie Zacharitz, who eagerly wanted to put her feet in the ocean. Many of us also tried to find cool rocks from the beach (as the beach was made up of rocks instead of sand), so that we could have a unique keepsake from the area. We were also fully entertained by a large group of people who were going to go swimming in the Channel on this extremely brisk day!

We then started to head back to the train station, and paused to have an early lunch of baguette sandwiches at a local shop. After a short train ride, we then got to explore the lovely town of Canterbury.

Canterbury is very well-known due to the English Literature classic: The Canterbury Tales. It were these stories that were the main focus of our exploration of Canterbury. The first place we visited was the Canterbury Cathedral. In The Canterbury Tales, the main focus of telling the stories was to entertain the pilgrims on their way to the Canterbury Cathedral. Canterbury Cathedral is also very important to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the main leader of the Church of England.





The Canterbury Cathedral is one of the oldest and most well-known churches in England. It was founded in 579, but was completely rebuilt in 1070 to 1077 into the cathedral that we saw. The Cathedral is also home to one of the biggest collections of English medieval stained glass.

Laptop the Cat, who lives in the Cathedral

After the Cathedral, we went to see an exhibition on the Canterbury Tales. Through an audio guided tour, we got to experience the telling of some of the most famous Canterbury Tales (The Knight's Tale, The Miller's Tale, The Wife of Bath's Tale, The Nun's Priest's Tale, and The Pardoner's Tale). We fully enjoyed seeing these reenacted in front of us in various ways and fully experiencing the sights and sounds that the pilgrims went on during their walk to Canterbury. 

Once we were done with the Canterbury Tales exhibition, we were then allowed some free time to explore the streets of Canterbury. The town is very obviously medieval, as many of the streets are narrow, filled with tiny various shops and restaurants. It was very fun to explore the streets, seeing the various street performers and local shops.




After meeting back up, it was time to leave Canterbury. Today was a fantastic day, as we got to experience something monumental in the English language. The Canterbury tales helped to revolutionize English as a language, and by learning this history all of our class mates have a new found respect for this classic. Canterbury and Dover and both amazing little English towns whose histories are rich with enlightenment.