Sunday: The Wax Museum, Dover, and Canterbury

On Sunday we awoke and met our new tour guide: Angie. She did not register a flicker of recognition when I asked her, "When will those clouds all disappear?" Perhaps she's not a Stones fan innit. We attempted to establish some new ground rules with Angie, chief among them that she exercise more restraint with the bus microphone than her predecessor Warren. After breakfast, we loaded our gear and set out for Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London.



They do some fine work at the wax museum, although maybe the best work was done in a series of interpretive, interactive photos by our own Jim Schanck. We spent an hour and a half exploring exhibits featuring film stars, athletes, musicians, and statesmen. The MT Wax experience also featured an optional dungeon promenade in which we plodded through a labyrinth in near darkness looking at waxy torture and murder victims while various people bolted out from the shadows to scream into our faces. Mr. Manilla may have soiled his britches but that has not been confirmed.

We left the Madame and boarded the coach for Dover on the Southeast coast. It was going to be a long trip, but we were encouraged by the presence of our new bus driver: Terry! Terry dominated. The two hour drive featured heavy napping, made more possible by Angie's apparent rejection of our arrangement about the microphone.



We arrived in Dover, disembarked, and threw a few stones in the direction of France, but due to the conditions we could not see across the channel.


We proceeded to Canterbury, a voyage punctuated by Terry's ability to back the motorcoach a half mile down a narrow, winding alley. We all cheered heartily and dropped our bags at the hotel (the ABode, a terrific hotel, by the way).



Then it was on to Canterbury Cathedral, which we toured independently for around an hour before we enjoyed an afternoon of free time in Canterbury.


And for the record, this guy fired up crepes on a griddle in his cart and served them with nutella--the result was frighteningly good. Canterbury is a quaint, charming British town with lots of shops, cafes, restaurants, etc. I loved it there.


An hour or two after check-in at the hotel, the fire alarm went off. British fire alarms, unlike their US counterparts, feature the exceedingly calm voice of a British bloke requesting immediate departure from the building. The group gathered in the adjacent alley, and much to our amusement Jimmy & Pat emerged wearing his & her bathrobes. Good comedy.



We walked down the road to the Falstaff Hotel for a group dinner. The Falstaff was not as posh as the ABode, but retained a rustic charm. We were shepherded into a back room for dinner, at the conclusion of which we celebrated Alyssa's 18th birthday with cake and song. As we finished our cake, in the shadowy recesses of the Falstaff courtyard, there skulked a broad figure who would be our entertainment for the evening: John Hippsley, the guide for the Canterbury Ghost Tour.



John's puzzling stroll through Canterbury's suitably creepy alleys had enormous potential but resembled more of a tired comedic rant aimed to offend just about any individual or group in existence. The result was occasional amusement punctuated by periods of extreme awkwardness. I can't be entirely sure I heard him correctly, but I think he might have even taken shots at Ernest Hemingway, Gandhi, and the Chicago Cubs. He ended the evening with an impromptu seance and punctuated it by scaring the daylights out of us by slamming his cane against a hollow iron door.



For the rest of the night, the group commandeered the Cathedral room in the hotel, a lounge with several couches and oversized chairs. I skyped Mrs. Gillett to make sure she didn't have a baby or anything. We were slated to depart the next morning at 8:30 to set out for Stratford-upon-Avon.