I absolutely fell in love with Canterbury. It was the most adorable, historical city. There have been Roman traces there for 2,500 years!! The cathedral there was built around 490 AD, so it has an unbelievable amount of history. Canterbury Cathedral is the mother church of England. The archbishop has traditionally lived there and he is the second most powerful person in the government (after the king and today, the prime minister). We went on a little walking tour of the city first, seeing all the adorable shops. Every other building was built around 1500. We saw the ancient decaying Norman walls built around 1050 when they conquered England (1066 is the major date every British person knows. Its the year William the Conquerer came over and conquered England. Thats also when he built the first part of the Tower of London.) Our tour guide told us the story of St. Thomas Beckett: He and the king, George II, were very close friends and he became the archbishop. When he became archbishop, he became a changed man and became very religious. He held his ground and never let the king have his way, so they butted heads a lot. One day, the king gave an indirect order that someone should rid him of the man. Four of the king's knights took the order seriously and rode down to Canterbury and preceded to murder Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. It was a brutal murder and you can still see the spot where he was killed. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims traveled to Canterbury to visit the shrine. This is where the book, Canterbury Tales, comes from. It talks about how each individual pilgrim has their own individual story traveling to Canterbury. Walking through the city, we saw the Canterbury Tales tourist attraction. The cathedral was stunning, it was so huge! While we were there, there was music playing while they were rehearsing for that night. It really gave the place an amazing atmosphere! You can still see the candle burns where Henry VIII destroyed Thomas Beckett's shrine. After the cathedral, we saw Eastbridge Hospital, an old place where all the pilgrims slept safely on their journey and its supposed to be one of the most haunted places in England. There was just a ridiculous amount of history throughout the cathedral and the city! We had about 45 minutes of free time, in which we just walked the streets of the cute little city and I got another Nutella and banana crepe :-)
Today, we went to Oxford. I learned that Oxford University is actually split up into 39 individual colleges. The city is just one beautiful college after another. We saw a memorial where Queen Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) burned some bishops and archbishops after she was trying to convert the country back to Catholicism after Henry VIII broke with the Catholic church. We saw a pub called the Eagle and the Child, where Tolkein and CS Lewis went for drinks. They made a bet there on who could write the best fiction books and hence, the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia were written. We saw one of the colleges where the infirmary in the Harry Potter movies were filmed. Then, my favorite part of the day, we went to Christ's church, the largest college of Oxford. Cardinal Wolsey originally began building the college, but when he disappeared (he failed miserably at getting Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon) Henry finished building the college. Of course, it was Henry, and he couldn't handle a small place. So he built the giant college and a giant cathedral with its own bishop and everything. Christ's church was the inspiration for Hogwarts and specifically, for the Great Hall. Walking through the halls, it really felt like Hogwarts! It was magical!
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