This morning I woke up at 3:30AM very confused. I am not yet used to the time change! We had a traditional English breakfast, which consisted of roasted tomatoes and mushrooms, bacon, sausage, blood pudding, and eggs. I stuck with some cold cereal instead and tried the bacon, which is more like Canadian bacon than the type we are used to. After breakfast we went out for a short walk to the post office and a bookstore.

We then headed to Canterbury Cathedral, which we had already seen from afar last night. The street entrance, though next to a Starbucks, was grand. There was an elaborately decorated arch with a gate that we entered through. Our tour guide was an older man and was very interesting, despite being a little long-winded. We learned a lot during the tour, including many historical facts. One architectural detail I found intriguing was that the nave was done in perpendicular gothic with tall columns and large windows, but the quire was done in a different style. The cathedral had fan vaulting that was very beautiful, and we saw magnificent stained glass. A lot of the stained glass was destroyed during the Reformation, but the highest glass was left intact because it was too much work to get that high. It was fascinating to hear about since I was brought up Lutheran and heard about the reformation from Martin Luther's point of view. Not once did we hear about all the destruction that took place, yet many details that we did learn about were left out from Catholicism's point of view.

One item we were able to see in the cathedral was Thomas Beckett's shrine. It was neat to hear all about Beckett and how he was killed in the cathedral, especially in light of the text we read about him. It also shed some light on my reading of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, some of which we read for class. I never realized that the characters were on a trek to Beckett's shrine, the very place where we visited today! Our tour guide even mentioned that after Beckett's death in 1120, there were tons of people lining up from all over to see the shrine. It was a very big deal to kill an archbishop in his own cathedral. Our next stop in the cathedral was the crypt, which felt more like a church than the rest of the place.

After a long tour and a quick Starbucks lunch, we rushed to find our bus. Eventually, after asking for directions a couple times, we were able to find it and head off to Winchester Cathedral. We arrived around 3PM with time to spare. Our tour guide this time was also an older man. He was a little spacey, but I appreciated his brevity. I liked Winchester Cathedral better than Canterbury, though Winchester did not have as grand of an entrance. My favorite part about Winchester Cathedral was the stained glass. The huge set of windows in the back was broken during the Reformation, but surprisingly the pieces were saved and reassembled. I was able see bits of faces, but it was truly a piece of abstract art! Its fragmentation set it apart from all the other windows we saw depicting the same bible stories. There was also another set of windows on the side that I enjoyed, with blue and purple pieces of glass. I'm not sure how authentic these windows were, but I found them more attractive than the many others that depict religious scenes.

We also saw Jane Austen's memorial. It was amusing to hear about one American woman who visited in the past. She was doing her dissertation on Jane Austen and burst into tears upon seeing the memorial. Another favorite area in the cathedral was the crypt, though we didn't get to see a lot of it. There was a beautiful sculpture that is usually surrounded by water, though it wasn't when we saw it. The sculpture was done by Antony Gormley and looked lonely in the dark and cold crypt. Our tour guide told us about how the crypt is not useful because it frequently floods, so a long time ago they filled it with dirt. When they cleared out the crypt, they found a very old ice skate made of fish bones! Our tour was concluded with a brief look at the quire of the cathedral. The choir was singing at the time, so it was a fun experience. We also got to hear about a diver sculpture. Long ago, the cathedral was beginning to buckle and so they had to flood water under it, put bags of cement, and rebuild the columns. One diver headed up the job, working under the water in the pitch black for six years. A sculpture was made in his honor, but only recently was it the right person! The first sculpture was accidentally made using the wrong photo.

We arrived at Grasmere House Hotel in the early evening and had a nice dinner. Our meal was fancy, with options for starters, main course, and desserts. We also got to have wine with our meal! After dinner we worked on our quizzes, and then Kim, Leah, and I went down to the hotel's bar. Others were already down there and it was fun to sit back and laugh after a long day. I had an "Amaretto Bridgett," which was a drink that the owner of the hotel invented especially for me when I requested an Ameretto Stone Sour. Other funny drinks people had were Flowers beer, a White Russian with crème on top, and lemonade with a dash of something weird and brown. And now, it's time for bed!