We had supper at a cool Italian restaurant. The restaurant itself wasn't spectacular, but there was a lady ( I think she owned the place, but I could be mistaken) who had her cat eating with her. It sat in it's own chair, sitting' pretty, purring and pushing at your hand as you walked by and - inevitably - stopped to say hello. After supper, most of us headed back to the hotel with James to get ready to go to a dance club. I was tired though, so I just stayed at the hotel, had a nice long (temperature controlled) shower, wrote in my journal, wrote postcards and spent some quality time with the tv. Though, there was nothing on worth watching. It was nice to get away from the 50+ people I'd been more or less living with for the past week.

   April 9th, 1999 (Friday). Next day, we traveled by coach to Canterbury Cathedral (anyone studied Chaucer? Canterbury Tales?) where Anglicanism was born - in that part of the world anyway. I thought this was rather cool cause I'm a baptised-yet-non-practising Anglican. I also thought it was cool because Thomas Beckett, a monk who was murdered in the church YEARS and years and years ago, was murdered on December 29th, the birthday of yours truly. The church was fricken HUGE (maybe not as huge as Notre Dame, but if not, it was getting pretty close. We got to see more of it than Notre Dame though). I don't have any pictures of it cause I was getting real low on cash real fast. I had enough to buy something of real sentimental value (another long story) and lunch. Yessir. Authentic english, grease ridden fish and chips. We all hopped back on the bus and took a drive through the English country to get to Leeds.
 
 

We got to walk the calories off when we got there, making a 20-30 minute trek through very  rich, green, grassy hills to Leeds Castle. Although it's been around a long time, people still live in Leeds castle. They've modernized it a little (I.E. fax machines). I'd have to disagree with Christine that it was the least interesting place on the trip. I thought it was very cool. Particularly walking to/from it. You get a beautiful view of it. The weather was typical of England, cool, gray, a little blustery, but I thought it was beautiful. You didn't even need a jacket.

    Afterward, we booted it back to London, to our hotel to change. We went for a quick supper at a Pub (which is actually short for "Public House", not necessarily a "drinking house"). We wolfed down our food as James proved himself as a worthy waiter. Being a little behind schedule, all 50+ of us ran through the streets of London to get to the theater on time. Having made it on time - we were fortunate enough to get a chance to see the production of BLOOD BROTHERS, about a set of twins separated at birth, one rich, one poor, yadda yadda yadda. Although you can't tell from my description, I very much enjoyed it! It was touching, humorous, sad, you know. Had all the elements that make a good play. I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up. Great holiday fun for the family (or your school group, chaperones, and tour guide as the case may be). We then headed back to the Britannia to pack for our departure the next day.

    The following morning (April 10th, 1999, Saturday) the Canadian groups got to sleep in a little. We all headed downstairs to pack up the bus that would take us to Heathrow.
 

I said good bye and thank you to James for a great tour and for having guarded my room when I had to leave it unattended without the key and all our stuff inside.  Oh, here's James and I in the lobby of the Britannia International the previous night after the play. We might be crazy, but Christine and I think he bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain person who's been very much in the public eye recently (or at least, more so if you take away the goatee). Are we crazy? Yay or Nay? If you can figure out who I'm talking about, send an email.

    Although I had a fabulous time, it's a great feeling when you know that you're going home, especially when you're the type who gets homesick easily. However, when I arrived in Toronto and discovered that my luggage had never left London, I was quite the unhappy pappy (I'll get you Canadian Airlines! Just kidding, JUST KIDDING DAMNIT!). Since we had a layover in Winnipeg that night, it's a good thing I had the foresight to get rid of some change before we left Heathrow and bought a shirt. I had to bring it in my carry-on luggage. Lucky me, I had a clean shirt to wear the next day in the last stretch of  the trip to home.

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