In the previous post I mentioned that one of the things I enjoyed the most out of my old blogging habits was sharing photos from my trips. So let’s start straightaway.
Last weekend my parents visited me from Poland. Given that this is our last month in Croydon flat, we will soon loose an easy access to this perfect starting points for trips around south England. We decided to rent a car and do a little trip to Canterbury, White Cliffs of Dover, Sandwich and Oxford.
Day 1 of the trip was a trip around Kent. The first few hours, we spent walking around Canterbury city centre and admiring the famous old Canterbury Cathedral. I must say this was certainly not enough time to fill satisfied with the sights. I felt like my appetite was just ever so slightly teased to explore more. My boyfriend and I decided that we are definitely coming back for a proper weekend trip to Canterbury in the spring/summer period.
Canterbury town centre is full of small street with medieval and gothic architecture, bustling with energy and inviting to surrounding coffee shops. I swear, I could spend my whole life drinking latte and reading books in cozy cafeterias, if was ever given that choice in exchange for a chance to visit them all. Sadly, on this occasion, there was not even enough time to sit down for a coffee!
After a short brisk walk from the parking next to barbican through the city centre, we got tickets to visit Canterbury Cathedral and rushed to begin sight-seeing. There was no time to waste, since the main part of the church was closing in half an hour for a service.
The entire cathedral was incredibly impressive and that comes from someone who has seen a fair share of impressive churches in their life. Even if you’re an atheist, agnostic, a gnostic, mystic or pagan, if you are born and raised in Poland, you would not getaway from being dragged to churches many, many times throughout your lifetime. One thing I have to admit thought, those churches certainly left a whole lot of fascinating architecture to admire. My parents themselves admitted, they were not prepared to be so mind blown by the cathedral. We definitely spent much longer there than initially planned. Which didn’t leave much much time to walk around the city centre itself.
After these few hours in Canterbury we headed straight for the White Cliffs of Dover. It was a pleasant surprise that the site there is managed by National Trust. At least we made some use of the membership that we’ve been paying since September. The view was absolutely beautiful and we could see the passenger ships maneuvering through the old famous port of Dover. Nonetheless, we have not spent there more than 15 minutes. The winds of the ocean shore were naturally turbulent and gusty. One had to stomp with their feet heavily, not to be blown of the edge of the cliff like a kite. My parents seemed to have not taken that into consideration when expressing their wish to visit the location frequently referenced in sea songs and sailor shanties. One quick look at the cliffs and they wanted to go back. This opened us some time to still have a chance to visit Sandwich and myself and Ivan, as if we were reading each other thoughts, immediately agreed to revisit White Cliffs of Dover for a hike, when the weather (not the wind 😉 ) gets a little bit better.
Having saved some time on the coastline stop gave us an opportunity to take my old folks to Sandwich – tiny historic town between Ramsgate and Dover. Sandwich itself deserves a post on its own. We discovered it with Ivan during the Easter break last year, while looking for ruins of Roman Fort. What we expected to be a small sad industrial town turned out to be a magical, stuck in time medieval settling, we immediately fell in love with. We arrived in Sandwich at the sunset and had a dinner at an old English pub – King’s Arms, where my parents and Ivan had a chance to taste quite an unusual take on traditional Fish&Chips. The fish was a skate and my parents unanimously declared the highlight of the entire trip.
