A Day-Trip

Monday 25 June, Canterbury

Today was Canterbury Day. We got a railcard from the nice man at the railway station with a lovely English accent and a severe squint, and off we went.

Canterbury was fun - Kate bought an FBI t-shirt and I got an ice-cream, and we wandered. You could tell we were Aussies - we were the only ones wearing sunburn cream, and therefore the only ones who didn't have skin the colour of fresh lobsters. One of the more fascinating bits was the Roman house they found in World War 2 when the new house on top of it was bombed to the ground. Suddenly, twelfth-century castles seem fairly recent - people were walking on these tiles almost two thousand years ago. And the school group with the stressed-out teacher having Their Day Out seemed oddly familiar, and mildly irritating.

Bought drinks at Marks & Sparks, and baked potatoes at a Subway, which just looked wrong - trying to be an American fast-food place in a very English Tudor building just doesn't work.

We decided not to pay megabucks for the river punt or any of the other tacky touristy things, and kept just wandering the back alleys on our ownsome. Night came, the train back to Charing came, and it was pasta with an improvised sauce made of tomatoes, bacon, basil & South African Chardonnay. Jane very sweetly listened to us rave about a place she'd surely seen hundreds of times, and we slept.