Belgium Study Abroad 2012: A Day Trip to Canterbury

6/17

This morning we all woke up at 6AM to go for a day trip to Canterbury in the UK. I packed a lunch and plenty of snacks for the day and me, Rasma, Paige and Tyler left at 6:45. We drove for 2 hours to the port in Dunkerque, France. We went through security for both France and UK security officers. The car was able to go on the ferry that we took, the ride was about 2 hours long and they had a nice café on board. As we approached the mainland we could see the White Cliffs of Dover. Once the boat stopped we were able to get in the car and drive out of the boat and into Dover. The drive to the city of Canterbury was only about 15 minutes long and we were able to see nice houses and large areas of land as we drove over many hills. I was scared while in the car because we were driving on the opposite side of the street and there were alot of roundabouts in the road. We got to Canterbury safely and started by going to a small shopping area. We went to T.K. Maxx (yes it’s the same as T.J. Maxx), a sports store and a Pound store (where everything is 1 British Pound).Afterwards we drove to another shopping area that also had a Pound store and some secondhand stores. I got some snacks from the Pound store that were really cheap and we had fun walking around near the rest of the stores. The majority of the stores close around 4 in the afternoon so we had to get all of our shopping done in a few hours. Once it was past 4PM, we took our time walking around the city and we found the Canterbury Cathedral where we were able to walk through and tour it ourselves. I got some great pictures of the inside and the outside. After spending about an hour getting pictures, we left and walked around in a different part of the city. We found a nice local place to eat; we were able to sit down and relax for a while which was really nice after so much walking. Our sightseeing continued until about 8PM where we started our trip back to the port. We did have a little time to take some photos near the White Cliffs of Dover. Then we got on our boat to take us back to Brussels. After that we still had another 2 hour drive in the car; I slept on both the boat and the car ride because I had my internship the next morning. I went directly to bed as soon as we got home which was at 3AM.