When in England...It's PAH-sty, not PAY-sty.

So, this post will mainly be about Canterbury, where I went about a week and a half ago, and the reason I haven't posted sooner is because I wanted to stick in pictures, and I was too lazy to move them from my camera to my computer before today. Anyways:

I went to Canterbury as part of UCL's Give it a Go events--pay 13 pounds, and they took a bus of us UCL associated people to Canterbury, dropped us off, and picked us up in the early evening to bring us back to London. I couldn't find anyone who was interested/not busy, so I decided I'd just play tourist by myself, but on the bus, I found three other people sitting next to me, all of them playing tourists by themselves, so we banded together to explore Canterbury and ended up having a fabulous time. They were all big picture takers, so we each took a lot (~200 was my final count), so I figured I'd share a few.



This was Canterbury castle, or the ruins of it anyways. I'd tell you a whole bunch of information, but I realized I was wikipedia-ing it anyways, so if you're really interested, you can go wiki it yourself. :D I am curious if anybody might have any ideas what the little string of rocks on the grounds of the castle is--see the little squiggly? We thought maybe the remains of a wall, but it ends very suddenly at the wall of the castle.
This is Dane John mound--thought to be a Roman burial mound. It's about a five minute walk from the castle, and there's a long castle wall starting here and going around the boundary of the city of Canterybury. When we were on the wall, it was sort of funny and sad, because you looked beyond it, and it was a bunch of ugly buildings--mainly large warehouse-style buildings, and within the castle walls, it looked largely like a little quaint town, with great architecture and a style like in the 17th-19th centuries.

The Canterbury cathedral, which was absolutely magnificent. It was HUGE, spectacularly so, and beautiful and just very, very grand. Henry IV is buried here, with his wife, Joan of Navarre. The most exciting story about this cathedral is the death of Archbishop Thomas Becket. Apparently, in 1172, King Henry II was upset at Becket and asked, "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?!" His knights took that literally and rushed to the cathedral where they murdered him in the cathedral.

I included this photo to show how massive it looks from the inside--isn't the architecture gorgeous?

A photo of one of the many stained glass windows in the cathedral.


My first glimpse of the cathedral as we began our walk towards it.

Here's an example of the buildings within the city of Canterbury. None of the others are so sideways, but they are all of this type of architecture (I'm not sure what to call it exactly--colonial keeps popping in my head, since colonial American buildings were derived from these buildings, but obviously, colonial is not the right word), which I quite love and far too many of my many photos are of random houses and shops.

We also went to an exhibit about The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer. It was one of those, you walk into the set, with 'authentic smells' (it really did smell like a stable in one room), and lifesize figurines and a realistic setting. Basically, we heard five of the tales, though it took us about half the tour to finally settle down and really listen to the stories.

We ate lunch at a cute little restaurant, where I had a beef and potato pasty and chocolate milkshake, and it was delicious. Also, since we had little bit more time before we needed to return to the bus, I had a half pint (yes, it was a very small glass and really, I only had a quarter pint because I split it with a friend) of 'Spitfire Premium Kentish ale.' As I thought, I didn't really like the taste, but now, I can finally say I've tasted ale.

On another note, last Thursday evening, I went to a gig to hear Portland Rise play. Portland Rise is a band that's just starting out, and the lead singer was in my Biology class, and he had told me about them. I liked what I had heard online, and I was curious whether they sounded good live, and I was itching to listen to a live band, so I went. Again, I went by myself, but I met another girl who was supporting another band who had gone by herself, so I made another new friend, and I really enjoyed the music a lot. Portland Rise is really good-sounding (they sound a little like Ben Folds Five), and they and two other bands were starting for the band Teitur, which was awesome. Teitur was sort of a part folk-part rock band, and the lead singer was really really good.

It was really cool because about half way through, he brought in a strings quartet to play with the band, and I love hearing strings in rock music. On other musical notes, the keyboardist had this contraption set up--basically a metal rod? They really hiked up the amp (I think that's the term I'm looking for?) and basically adjusted the electronics so as to make the metal rod vibrate, and then as he placed something nearer or farther from the rod, the sound changed drastically, and it made for a really cool effect during the show. And, here's one last parting picture--this guy was on the bass guitar (I thought he was sort of cute!), and he was using a bow on the strings of the electric guitar. That had a really cool musical effect as well.

And, since Linda wanted a shout-out, here you go! Now, you better comment lots and lots so I feel like I did not just waste my hour writing up this blog. :D