The third full-time day in Canterbury

The third day in Canterbury. In the footsteps of Chaucer.

This morning I discovered that my linen jacket needed ironing. The hotel did not do washing nor ironing. As always, the helpful landlady came to aid and directed me to a dry cleaner’s at Westgate. The place is run by a welcoming immigrant family with quaint accent. Mind it, laundry service in Canterbury is not cheap, washing and ironing three items may cost 20 pounds and things aren’t done at a finger snap.

This being done, I dived into the town’s pedestrianised High Street, where most of the shops cluster. The term "high street" still denotes a street where the main bulk of trade in town takes place. Window-shopping can be fun once it doesn’t bucket on you. One culture-related remark: have you ever noticed that people walk the way they drive ? Being a right-side driver, I couldn’t help bumping into contraflow street roamers.

As I had no classes to observe today, I made a decision to pay a long-ago-planned visit to the Canterbury Tales Museum. 

Visiting this must-to-see will run 11 pounds for an adult and 9 quid for those under 18. The free of charge audio guides are available in all the main European languages, Estonian and Russian are not on the option list. Still, I would strongly recommend to pick the English version. The language is simple and you will hear five tales as you go from one room to another. Cecily, a charming redhead, will introduce you to the plot of the Tales and their humble author. Well, he wasn’t that humble, being quite well-off as a wine merchant’s son. What he did was taking a cross-section of the entire 14th century English society by bringing all its classes together as they go on a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury and portraying them in English and for the English. A one-way trip would take about 5 days, and how were the pilgrim companions supposed to entertain themselves? Right, by telling stories. So come and hear five of them, walk through the streets of a middle-age town, feel how it smelled, see what it was like to live then. 

"Look out there below !"

Very conveniently, the tour ends at the gift shop.

The official website of the museum is worth visiting: https://www.canterburytales.org.uk

It provides a bulk of downloadable learning resources, like the one below, where all five stories are nicely abridged: https://www.canterburytales.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/KS3-Activities.pdf