We arrived on the white cliffs of Dover, England our final port before reaching Greenwich and they kick us off the ship after 138 days.
In Dover we went to Leeds Castle and then stopped at the Canterbury Catherdral.
Leeds is a beautiful estate castle that was originally built on in 800’s and has a fantastic royal history of ownership including Henry the VIII who first wife Catherine of Aragon lived in the castle.
The castle has been burned, torn down by fire, rebuilt and refaced over the centuries but the property surrounding it remained esquisite.
In 1974, Lady Baillie left the castle to the Leeds Castle Foundation, a private trust to preserve the castle and grounds for the benefit of the public. On beautiful days, tourist from all over come to visit and stroll the grounds. We had a glorious beautiful warm and sunny day on the grounds and enjoyed the scenery.
In Canterbury, we had a nice lunch then toured the famous Canterbury Cathederal where Thomas Beckett was killed on order of Henry II and then buried. It became a pilgrimage site (ever read Canterbury tales?) and in 1200’s his his remains moved to avoid theifs. The cathedral is the home of the church of England and the archbishop for Canterbury the head of the Anglian church.
The cathedral is a masterpiece in Gothic style with flying buttresses and large stain glass windows. A candle marks the place where Beckett’s body had laid and two royalty are buried nearby – Henry IV and Thomas “the Black Prince” who was air to the throne but unexpectantly died before he became king.
I hope the photos we took give you a glimpse of the majestic cathedral that was amazing to see in real life.
We got back to the ship as we celebrated our lest leg of the cruise going from Dover to Greenwich England where we would disembark the world cruise. We had a wonderful diner with friends we made along the cruise and thoroughly enjoyed their company, their story and conversations.
Upon reaching Greenwich we had a morning to pack 5 months of “stuff” into bags then we took a stroll around Greenwich. We had a lunch of Fish and Chips with a pint of Guinness then went back to The Greenwich Observatory which we visited in August 2023 (see blog on Norway cruise we took) It was May Day in London as they celebrated a bank holiday and 80th anniversary of VE Day. We saw in the distance a flyover of Britain’s “Red Arrows” (think US’s blue angels) do a flyover across Greenwich going towards Buckingham palace. Our friends were in Greenwich at the time and got a real good video of them overhead. (thanks Dave Leonard!)
The next morning, we sadly disembarked the ship and took a cab ride to our Hotel the Hyatt Regency Churchill in London where we will stay a week before going to Scotland. We have lots of places to see, so may not have time to blog until we get back to the states.
I plan to do a closing blog to give some final thoughts of the world cruise and you can bet that the experience will be highly rated and should be on everyone’s bucket list.
