...then finally left London!

The weekend before last I went on my first BUNAC day trip to Leeds Castle and Rochester. It was my first time leaving London in the two months that I’ve been here.

The weather that morning was amazing. We arrived at Leeds Castle under clear blue skies and sunshine, which made for some gorgeous photos. The castle was built in the middle of a small lake, has expansive, very well-kept grounds, a hedge maze with underground grotto, and lots of peacocks (including two rare albino ones) running around. Very cool place to visit.

The second leg of our trip took us to Rochester (home of Great Expectations), which was having its annual Charles Dickens Christmas Festival. Rochester’s main street where the festival was being held was absolutely adorable, and there were lots of people dressed up in Victorian clothing wandering the streets taking pictures with people and playing music. The festival was fun, but strangely enough (my friends noticed this too), other than the Christmas music being played and the availability of mulled wine and mince pies, there was very little that was actually Christmas-y about the festival. Oh well. The trip was really fun overall, and I got to meet and hang out with a bunch of other Americans on the BUNAC program.

The next Saturday I ended up taking a day trip to Canterbury with one of the Americans I met the previous week. We started out the day exploring the big cathedral, then saw the Canterbury Tales visitor attraction, which is a series of animated dioramas illustrating a few of the more amusing Canterbury Tales. Then (as it started to rain) we went to the Canterbury Roman Museum. After seeing the museum we stopped at the front desk to ask for tips on what else we should see. We chatted with the guy behind the counter for a half hour or so before heading off to lunch. After lunch (at this cute local pub) we went to see this museum in a big medieval tower that was used for the town’s defense. It turned out that the guy at the Roman Museum worked at the Tower too, and since we were there near closing time, he took us up to the very top of the tower to check out the view (the top deck has been closed to the public for the last 20 years). The view was amazing, and the guy gave us a few postcards for free as well. All in all it was a pretty good day. :-)