Canterbury

Okay, before I say much about my New Years Eve in London, I want to say something about Canterbury and the cathedral we saw there. It was beautiful. From what I gathered, it is the oldest cathedral in the UK.

This was my feeble attempt at 'stitching' photos together. The bottom region is supposed to go together like you see to the right. :-) It was built so long ago, that Christopher Columbus has seen it.

Here are some more shots from the inside.

I was amazed at the intricate detail that was put into the structure. As I looked closer to the ceiling I saw more detail a hundred feet up than I would have expected. Maybe the detail was there because it was out of reach of most people, and so it was preserved. There were some older sculptures I saw on some of the sarcophagi that surprised me. A nose had broken off or some other facial feature, but because of the many people that had handled the sculpture since it broke, the area where the nose should be was smooth. So, it may be possible that the lower parts of the cathedral, in theory, had just as much detail as the ceiling when it was first build.

It's amazing what beauty people can make when they focus on the details. Here are two other pictures I was able to take on the 30th of December. Dover Castle on some of those white cliffs. They actually didn't let us go to the castle or the white cliffs for that matter. I don't know if it was a safety issue, but I could imagine that being the case since the cliffs are made of something similar to chalk. Between natural erosion and tourist's natural inclination to get as close to the edge of a cliff as possible for an awesome picture, I'm sure they just decided it was best to keep us far away. ;-)

The London Bridge, different from "The London Bridge" which is somehow in Arizona, was more of a drive by shooting. I don't know how many shots I took, this one was the best. No cool little factoids here. Sorry.
I'll try to have everything we did on New Years Eve posted before this time next week. Maybe I'll make it one of my New Year's Resolutions. If it doesn't work out better luck next year. :-)