A Tale of Canterbury

The English town of Canterbury is famous for 2 things -The Canterbury Cathedral and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  I have not read all of the Canterbury Tales, although I may have to.  I understand that many of them are funny and a bit racy.

The Cathedral is the main church in England.  The Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, is installed here even though he resides in London (Westminster Abby.)  However, when he comes to Canterbury, he must ask the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral for permission to enter the church.  And, here I thought only Lutherans get hung up on church politics!

The Cathedral has a fascinating history.  A saint was killed here, It is the site of miracles.  A king and the Black Knight, who was supposed to become king, are buried here.  The Cathedral has been built, burned, rebuilt, added on to,  partially demolished, refurbished, had windows broken and reinstalled, has glass window from the 11th century as well as the 20th century and many years in between, was the site of grave robbing, flogging of a king, and has modern art exhibits in many of the chapels. We saw a chapel recently uncovered, which had been walled off for centuries.  As our guide said, it is a living church with services and activities for all.

This was our first view of the Canterbury Cathedral.  Much of the stone used for carvings and structures is centuries old and deteriorating.  Each piece must be evaluated and/or removed.  Then the new, and hopefully more durable, stone is hand carved and fit back in the space.  In many cases, parts of the design carved hundreds of years ago is completely missing.  There are no drawings to show what it looked like, so they just have to guess based on similar carvings nearby.

The restoration has been going on since 2005, I think, and they plan to be done by 2022.  I do not think they will make the deadline.  Currently there are about 60 miles of scaffolding covering the west end of the cathedral.

This is the south transept, near the middle of the cathedral.  The stained glass windows are magnificent, and this is just one set of dozens of intricate windows.  The glass is being removed, one pane at a time, cleaned and reset. As the window pane is reinstalled, they are adding an exterior layer of clear glass to protect the window from the elements (especially pollution.)

This cross marks the spot where Thomas of Beckett was killed by 2 men who thought that was what King Henry II wanted.  It was not.  The king later denounced the killing and asked to be forgiven, even to the extent of being flogged to pay for his sins.

Some of the ceilings have the crests of English families.  All the crests of the Beckett family were defaced.


Ornate carving decorates all parts of the cathedral, inside and outside.  Even the entrance to the lane leading to the cathedral is fancy.






























During World War II, Germany bombed cultural sights to demoralize the British.  They bombed Canterbury, using flares to mark the place for bombers to hit.  Fortunately a wind blew the smoke to the south, so the cathedral was spared.  However, a nearby church was badly damaged.  This bell tower is all that is left of it.

Oh, Another Port

The port in question is Porto, Portugal, on the banks of the Douro River.  We visited Porto in 2013, but arrived by bus from Lisbon. There is now a new modern port on the Atlantic which can accommodate large cruise ships where we were greeted by local dancers.










We then had a 45 minute drive into downtown Porto.  Along the way we saw monuments to sailors, forts and a lot of rocky shore.

Our bus took us around downtown Porto with a few stops but we did not have time to get out and see the railway station with its magnificent tiles.  Portugal is known for its tile and tiled buildings.  The picture on the left is what we saw in the railway station in 2014.  The picture on the right shows some of the buildings with some tile decorations.







One of the stops was on a hill above the river since the bus could not navigate the narrow and steep streets.  Henry the Navigator looks down on the river, and pigeons look down on him.


























This "double church" was actually two churches.  On the right was the church where the population was allowed.  The church on the left was for the monks who had a monastery next to the church.

The Baroque interior with lots of gold

No visit to Porto would be complete without a visit to a Port warehouse.  The grapes are grown, harvested and pressed in the Douro Valley, farther inland than Porto.  At one time casks of juice were transported downriver in small boats. Now it comes by tanker truck, so the old boats were converted to tour boats to show visitors around up and down the river and under the many bridges. 



All the major brands of port wine have warehouses along the river, and we visited Calem (a major brand of port.) The port is fermented and aged in barrels or large casks, depending on the characteristics desired.  Our guide gave us more information about port wine than we ever wanted to know.  Of course, we just had to drink both glasses of port we were given.  You do not want to insult the hospitality, after all.

My Way is Segway

I did it!  I have wanted to try out a segway for a long time, so when the opportunity came up in

Cartegena, I took it.  It really is not that difficult, and it is FUN.  I was not able to take too many pictures, but I did manage this one.





















This picture, taken at an overlook above the city, show how I really felt about the experience.  It is one of my favorite pictures.

After we had practice and ridden around on level ground for a while, we stopped to see the first electric submarine, built in Spain in the 1880's.
A year later an identical one appeared in France.  Can you say "industrial espionage?"

In the morning I was able to walk around the city for a while to admire the architecture and the ruins of a Roman amphitheater.

City Hall, built in 1907

The railroad station

I also saw the world's largest sailing ship.  Notice the size of the boat in the foreground.









Darrell took a tour to Murcia, a neighboring town.  I am including some of his pictures, but I cannot tell you anything about them.  I just think they look nice.

To the right - another Old Beautiful Cathedral; of course almost of them are old and beautiful (DZ)

They do love their flowers in Spain as well as in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
(DZ)












Just ABC!
Another Beautiful Cathedral
(DZ)

A small Look at a Large Country

Algeria is the largest country in Africa.  About two thirds of the country is desert, with only one third inhabited.  We finally made it to Algiers in our second attempt.  A few years ago we signed up for a Mediterranean Cruise  because it included stops in Tunisia and Algeria.  Unfortunately, those two stops were eliminated for safety reasons.  This year we were scheduled to visit the same two cities.  A few days before our scheduled stop in Tunis, the EU and the US Government advised that travel to Tunisia was not recommended, so Viking eliminated the stop.  We kept waiting for them to cancel Algeria but we did get to go there, but only on Viking scheduled tours.  No private tours or independent touring was allowed.  Even then, our buses traveled in convoy with a police escort before and after.  We never felt threatened.  In fact, people waved and smiled as the buses drove past.  We were there on a weekend, so there were a lot of people on the streets and especially in the area around the huge War Memorial.  A couple of students stopped us and wanted to practice their English.

The War Memorial towers over the city.  It is shaped like 3 large palm fronds, joined at the top.  At the base of each frond there is a statue showing Algerian soldiers from different times in the country's history.

Soldier before French rule

Soldier during French rule

Soldier after Algerian independence

As we drove around the city, most of the buildings pointed out were built when Algeria belonged to France.  There are some boarded up buildings, but not as many as we have seen in Asian cities or especially Cuba.  The city also has a number of parks and monuments.

Botanical garden, built on a drained swamp

Algiers is mostly Muslim, but it does have 6 or 7 Christian churches, including one synagogue which is now a Christian church.

The two most visited sights in the city are the Cathedral and the Casbah.  We only saw these from our bus and at a great distance.

We have seen all sorts of ships in the harbors we have visited.  In Algiers, we saw one we have never seen before - a cattle ship!  We suspected that this was not the usual cargo ship when we saw bales of hay on the deck.  Then we actually saw them unloading cattle.

ANCIENT Sandinia

Not just old, but ANCIENT!  I visited ruins in Buramini (prounced broom' ini) that were built in the 14th Century BC.  The pyramids were built around 3 centuries BC.  The amazing thing about these ruins is that they were unknown until 1951, covered by the "sands" (or dirt) of time.

A local man who also happened to be a famous archaeologist got curious about some of the artifacts found by locals and started digging.  The ruins uncovered were a "nuraxi"(pronounced new rah' gah) and the surrounding village.  This structure was probably one of many, each built on a hilltop within sign of another in every direction.

The construction used huge stones fit together to make a hollow tower.  This was connected to 4 smaller towers, one for each of the cardinal directions.  (Shown in brown on the map)  The primary purpose was probably defense.











As the tower rose, smaller stones were used, with the result that there was no need for a capstone as used in an arch.  If the top layer or 2 or 3 were removed, the rest of the tower still remained upright.  The tan walls were added  perhaps 100 years later, then the village round huts in yellow, and finally the more irregular houses in green.








I am not sure how people entered in ancient times, but we took a staircase part way up, then entered through a small opening and descended to the lowest level of the tower by means of irregular stone steps in very low and narrow passages.










There was a well in the center courtyard, a necessity if the tower came under siege.  There must have been some sort of ladder to get to the upper levels and the top, but these were probably made of wood and have long since rotted away.  The view from the top was spectacular.

Small openings in the walls could be used for storage.






On the drive back to Cagliari (pronounced Cahl' lair ee), We drove through a little village where murals, some primitive and some fanciful,  were painted on many of the walls. 

The countryside was hilly, and it is easy to understand why the nuraxi of Buramini was undiscovered for so long.  There are ruins of medieval castles on some of the hills.  If you dug under the castles,, you would probably find more ancient ruins.

Before returning to the ship we had a quick, driving tour of the city of Cagliary, a city built on 7 hills, just like Rome.  There were no ancient ruins, just lots of old and new buildings with a castle, monument or church at the top of each hill.

At one time, this city was famous for its salt production.  Salt-rich sea water was isolated in large ponds.  As the water evaporated, the salt remained and was scooped up, packaged and sold all over Europe.  However,a  modern problems (pollution) put an end to the business.  They say that the pollution has been cleaned up, but the salt business has never resumed.  A small species of pink shrimp lives in the ponds, and thousands of flamingos feast on them every day.  Our guide told us that the flamingos have the ideal life.  They sleep 12 hours and eat 12 hours.  The shrimp give them their red coloring.

Salt ponds