I've grown sightly lazy in my postings as of late, but we've been having lots of fun in the meantime, so it's time to get caught up!

Monday we went on another fantastic pub tour with John. All of his tours consist of going to four historic pubs each with unique features as well as making some stops in between to learn about the area. This time we took the Covent garden tour to visit pubs in the entertainment district.

We learned of a law where you are unable to drink on the sidewalk... Weird right??? It has something to do with the fact that the sidewalks can't be blocked from pedestrian traffic. Since London streets are mostly pretty narrow, there isn't much room on the sidewalks (there's hardly any outdoor eating as a result). One of the pubs we went to is right off a rarely used street, and as such it's legal to drink in the street, but illegal to drink on the sidewalk. No... Really, there were ropes and signs explaining as much.  

Back in 2016 when Amanda and I were in London John had recommended that we visit a particular alley as it was said to have been an inspiration for diagon alley in Harry Potter. Well sure enough, it was one of our stops this time around... Only this time we had John to point out things of interest (as well as many more deathly hallows symbols in the windows)

Originally John had told us to check out "The Harp" pub, but back then it was far too tiny and completely full so we never stopped in for a drink. We got a chance to spend some time there this time as well as have the added perk of drinking a few pints in the process. The trip to the bathroom is a bit perilous, but we both managed to make it without many injuries.

Our next trip was an excursion on Wednesday, our first stop: Dover Castle.

Dover Castle is the largest Castle in England and as it sits on the closest crossing point between England and Europe, played an important part in much of English history. 

Having recently watched Dunkirk, I was especially excited to go underground and see the tunnels from WWII. You get to walk in the actual footsteps of the British soldiers/personnel that were stationed at Dover Castle. It was a bit eerie imagining the sound of German planes somewhere overhead with soldiers shuffling through the passageways. We got to stand in the very rooms that operation Dynamo (the rescue of 340,000 allied soldiers from Dunkirk) was planned and executed from. I know I say this a lot... But I'm going to say it again... the entire experience was super cool.  

Upon leaving the tunnels we found that we only had a short while to see whatever we could. We ran up the hill to take a glance at the battlements and had an opportunity to walk along the inside Castle walls. It's at this point that you really start to understand the scale of Dover Castle. The walls stretch up into the sky and you can't help but think how imposing that would be for any attacking force. I spoke previously about proper castles... This is a proper freakin' Castle!

Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to go see the lighthouse, which we were told was built in 40 A.D., or go into the great tower, but we both greatly enjoyed our visit. Will definitely need to go back and spend more time there someday.

Our tour then briefly took us down to the port at the base of the castle to give us an opportunity to admire the white cliffs of Dover. They definitely are white! They are made up of chalk with chunks of black flint that contrast beautifully with the super blue water down below them. The port probably isn't the best view of them, but it did the trick for me.

Next we drove over to Canterbury to spend some time at Canterbury Cathedral. It's billed as the "Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion". Truthfully, I have no idea what that means... But I can safely say that the cathedral is beautiful:

We spent some time wandering around enjoying the huge pillars and ornately decorated ceilings and archways. One of the local volunteers chatted with us for a bit telling us a few pieces of relevant history and then spent the rest of the time just shooting the breeze for a while.

During our wandering I noticed a courtyard that I decided required Amanda's immediate attention. Walking outside we came to this:

Now, Canterbury Cathedral wasn't actually used to film any of the Harry Potter films (originally they were going to, but ended up going to Gloucester cathedral instead), but the courtyard definitely looks similar. Amanda was quite pleased :D

And that's closes up our Wednesday trip.

On a whim I decided that we should see a play in one of the theatres in London while we were here. Unfortunately the Harry Potter play is ridiculously expensive, so we went with a" close" second and saw Aladdin at the Prince Edward Theater. There were lots of kids, it was long, but it was also good. That is all I'm going to write about that ;)

Tomorrow we are going on a tour of the Houses of Parliament because soon they will be closing it for 6 years to renovate. Sunday we leave Fulham (where we are currently staying) and move to Pimlico for 2 weeks. I'm told it's a bit more Posh, and being just a few blocks from Buckingham and Westminster I believe it. More to come shortly ;)