I was pretty beat by the end of the week, but decided that I needed to keep up my tradition of getting out of town on the weekend at least once, so I took a one hour train ride south to Canterbury on Saturday morning. It's not a very large town, but is fairly well known due to its status as the seat of the Anglican Church (the head of the church is the Archbishop of Canterbury). It has a long history as a center of Christianity, going all the way back to St. Augustine's mission to convert the pagan Angles and Saxons some 1400 years ago.
Walking into the city from the train station, the towers of the West Wall are one of the first things you see:
It's basically the only remaining portion of the city wall. You cross a small river right before you go through the city gate, and the river itself is very picturesque:
My first stop was the cathedral, naturally.
Here's the view from the back of the cathedral, looking forward:
Behind the pulpit is another sort of chapel which looks like it's primarily for meetings of priests and other officials. I really liked this portion of the cathedral, for its colors and architecture. Based on this alone, I'd say Canterbury is one of the better cathedrals I've visited.
This cathedral has the usual assortment of gothic ceilings and stained glass windows--always cool to see.
One of the cool things about these cathedrals is how a lot of effort was put into parts of the structure you might not normally care about, such as interior courtyards and hallways.
When I was done in the cathedral, I walked around the outside for a bit. It hadn't started raining yet, so it was pretty pleasant.
People were gathering for a wedding inside the cathedral, and based on the people I saw, I can safely say that the weird hat thing is not just a part of royal weddings here; every other woman I saw was wearing some kind of odd hat. I didn't take any photos, but maybe I'll do that in the future.
My next stop was St. Augustine's Abbey, which is the ruins of an abbey with a history that goes back to the introduction of Christianity in England in the sixth century. The abbey was torn down and rebuilt a couple times in its history, and continued to be used for almost a thousand years, until it was shut down by King Henry VIII in the 1500s.
My next stop was the nearby St. Martin's church, which is apparently seldom visited despite its distinction as the oldest continuously used church in England, with a history going back to the sixth century. It's not glamorous or anything like that, but it's interesting to see for its history.
Walking into the courtyard:
The front of the church:
Looking toward the pulpit:
View from the front of the church:
When you consider England's history, which included occupation by Roman forces for hundreds of years, it's interesting to see how humble this structure was compared to things that were built before it in other parts of the world. Some of the structure, by the way, consists of reused Roman bricks.
Despite the age of the church, most of the graves are much newer, which suggests to me that burial plots have been reused over the centuries.
After that, I visited two museums, the Roman Museum and the Museum of Canterbury. Both were pretty decent, with an assortment of artifacts dating back to Canterbury's occupation by the Romans some 2000 years ago.
I had planned to do some street photography when I was done, but it started to rain so I only got a couple shots.
I found a Turkish restaurant and ordered a mixed plate of shish, kebabs and doner, and while it wasn't quite as good as what I used to get in Istanbul, it was very nice to have some Turkish food again. I got back on the train and headed back to London after that.
I visited a couple of museums the following day. The first of those was the Tate Modern. This was my third visit there, and it was enjoyable, as always. My primary purpose there was to check out the Joan Miro exhibition. Miro was a Catalan surrealist painter/sculptor. Photos weren't allowed in this portion of the museum, which is fairly standard for paid exhibitions. Still, it was interesting to see Miro's work and to see how it progressed throughout his life. I'd say that I prefer other surrealists, such as Dali and Magritte, but I'd also put up some of Miro's work in my house if I could find a wall.
After I was done at the museum, I crossed the foot bridge across the Thames to St. Paul's cathedral. This is definitely one of my favorite places to walk around anywhere in the world.
My next stop was the Museum of London, which as the name implies, is a museum about the history and people of London, going all the way back to prehistoric times. The entire museum was free, and it totally exceeded my expectations. I was expecting it to be some crappy little building with about 20 things to see, but every period of London's history was extensively documented, with lots of artifacts to support, from flint knives and daggers over 6000 years old, to dresses, furniture and china from the Victorian era, to brightly colored dresses and platform shoes from the 60's and 70's.
I don't typically take photos of things inside museums unless there's something I find really interesting about them, so here's one of the only things inside the Museum of London that I took, simply because I liked the way the light shone on it.
If you're ever in London, it's worth a visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment