Our check out time from the cottage was 10am, but our ferry wasn't until 2pm.  So, we had a bit of time to kill and not a terribly long drive to the boat.  So, we decided to try to locate the "Kit's Coty" which is just above Maidstone.  Kit's Coty is one of two pre-historic monoliths thought to be older than even Stonehenge.  Well, heck if we could find it!

We even stopped for directions on the precise road but somehow ended up back on an on-ramp to the highway.  So, that is for another trip after much research.  So, perhaps we can get on an earlier boat.

Well, that wasn't to be the case.  Not only was the earlier boat full, but also late.  An hour late to be precise.  So, we sat at the ferry docks for ages before finally boarding.  Luckily, the weather was nice and we sat out on deck for the entire trip.

Our fun wasn't completely over though as the traffic in France was unreal!  Enter traffic jam #1.  We finally get past that and move on.  This is an extremely dull section of highway and you do NOT want to ever stop at a French "rest stop".  Unlike many rest stops where you have toilets, sinks, etc, the French ones just have a hole that you are supposed to hover over.  Forget about their being toilet paper either!  So, use the facilities on the boat and/or hold it until you get to Belgium!

Finally, we made it to Belgium and were making pretty good time.  We stopped for a pizza along the way and were getting pretty tired.  Enter huge traffic jam #2.  It begans miles outside of Antwerp and continued through Antwerp.  What normally would have taken us 30 minutes, now took us 1 1/2 hours.

Finally, we crossed the Belgium/ Holland border!  The final stretch!!!  I was so happy to see our house as we turned onto our street.  Inside, we were happily greeted by Jaap's Aunt, our dog, and our cat.  God, we were tired!  It's always great to travel, but also great to come back home.

public holdiday today-it rained all day

surfed the net and watched black books on dvd

time to relax

Today we drove to see Leeds castle, which is actually in Kent

fantastic big castle, walked through the castles looking at all the rooms and memorobilia,some of the rooms are still in use, i think people can hire it out for weddings and such, wandered around the grounds, took the road train

we stopped to watch the jousting which was good fun, they even got the kids in the audience into the ring to look at the weapons and pretend to be soldiers, they all seemed to be having a good time, then the red and blue soldiers did battle, got some nice photos before my camera battery ran out.  drank coffees and espressos as we watching from a great vangtage point

then walked over to the birds of prey show and the hedge maze, in which we got thoroughly lost, along with lots of other lost people, we finally had to ask directions from one of the staff standing in the middle of the maze up high so she could point the way out through the dark tunnels of the grotto, felt dizzy after all that, glad to be out, but it was fun to get lost. got the road train back to the carpark

back to the house for dinner and a rest-time to type some entries for my travel blog

Last year, we visited Leeds Castle in Kent. It is a lovely, old castle and the tour was informative, albeit a wee bit short. It is always a shame that you cannot see more of the castles. Not only do you have access to the castle itself, but also the grounds. The grounds are truly breathtaking and vast. Either getting lost in the maze garden, visiting the birds of prey area and seeing the performance, or just wandering through the gardens are all options. You can easily spend more than one day there. One of the benefits of buying your ticket there, is that it is valid for a year. You can revisit all that you want within that time. If you miss something the first time, go back. Leeds Castle is definetely worth a visit.

I definitely needed to do some sightseeing, so having a day off I went with my cousins Faye and her boy Johnny to Leeds Castle in Kent. Its a beautiful castle, hundreds of years old which has been restored many times.

The grounds surrounding the castle are beautiful, lakes and ponds full of many species of ducks, geese, white and black swans! They also have magnificent aviaries which exist from the eighteenth century coz some rich lady loved birds. There's macaws, lorikeets, owls, parrots, spoonbills ect. Even the castle corridors were lined with paintings of birds.

Then there was the big hedge maze, so totally confusing an near impossible to get to the middle!!! We found a guide who leads us in the right direction eventually!!! Felt very Harry Potter =D We took Johnny to play in the playground which was pretty cool.

The castle's beautiful and immaculate, they spend a lot of time and money keeping it so pristine. Definitely a must see for tourists =D

Took a day trip out of London into Kent to see one of the most famous and loveliest castles in England - the Leeds Castle.  Standing on two islands on a lake, it was originally built in 857 AD as a Saxon manor and was later transformed into a Royal Palace in 1278 by King Edward I.  The castle has been home to six medieval English Queens as well as Henry VIII, and like with most castles, its original structure has been expanded throughout their reigns.  The Leeds Castle has come under the ownership of several influential families, the last of which was Lady Baillie, an American heiress who rescued its former owners from bankruptcy by buying the castle and restoring its interiors to reflect its illustrious past.  Lady Baillie died in 1975 and the castle was passed on to the Leeds Castle Foundation, which preserves and promotes the castle until today.  It is presently open not just to tourists but for various corporate and private events 

Walking through the castle, I was amazed to find how well it was preserved.  And I don't mean just the castle itself, but a lot of its original trimmings are still intact.  Of course it's been occupied until as late as the 70s so much of it decor is from recent history.  But nonetheless, I think this is one of the few castles I've been to whose public areas remain to be almost fully furnished, unlike a lot of the others where half of the rooms and halls you walk through have been left bare. 

It would've been ideal to see the gardens and take a nice leisurely stroll, but we were on a schedule and there was only time for the main feature, not the extras.  I did, however, manage to sneak away from the group and head out to the area by the moat to take some photos, seeing as two girls had gone off before me as well. 

The trip then took us next to Dover where we had a less than satisfying lunch at the Lighthouse Inn.  A strong wind was blowing accompanied by fog so thick you could barely see the view.  We drove down to the beach by the port below to get a better view of one of England's most famous landmarks, the spectacular White Cliffs. 

Composed of chalk and black flint and reaching up to 350 ft. in height, the White Cliffs of Dover form part of the southeastern British coastline facing continental Europe.  On a clear day, one can easily see the French coast.  The Dover Castle sits on top of it, but unfortunately, that wasn't part of the tour and we were soon on our way to to Canterbury. 

It was like traveling back in time, walking through the centuries-old cobblestoned streets of Canterbury.  It's a shame that modernization has crawled its way into this city, as were greeted by a huge Gap sign over one of the medieval structures.  On to the cathedral....

As with most cathedrals, this is another colossal one, with an extensive history to match its size.  It dates back to the first century when it was first founded by the first Archbishop, St. Agustine in AD 597.  Many additions were erected thorughout the year by succeeding Archbishops.  This includes the expansion of the nave, the construction of the western apse, the Christ Church Priory, the quire and the crypt - the largest in the UK, plus the Trinity Chapel, the Corona Tower, to name a few.  The Canterbury Cathedral is the site where Thomas Beckett, the second Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in the 1100s over a disagreement with King Henry II. 

There was no guided tour for this one, we were pretty much left to our own devices for once and ample time was given for us to go around.  I didn't have a guide to the cathedral though, so I ended just meandering about until it was time to regroup with the rest and head over to Greenwich. 

It's too bad that the Cutty Sark had been nuked several weeks prior to our visit so we were unable to see that.  It would've been the only point of interest in Greenwich since we were only driving there to take a ferry ride on the Thames back to London.  With the rain pouring, nobody really had much of a choice but to sit inside.  Good thing they were serving afternoon snacks, which staved off our growing hunger and kept us from getting bored. 

The rain hadn't let up by the time we got back to London so we found shetler in a restaurant for an early dinner. 

Later that evening as we plopped ourselves on the bed and turning on the TV, we discovered that the Glasgow International Airport had been the next location of another terrorist attack, and that a terrorist suspect had just been arrested at the John Lennon Airport in Liverpool.  The news gave us the chills as we had just come from those places, plus there was that failed bomb attack in London just yesterday!!  And to think I was in London in 2005, missing the chain of bomb blasts by a 3 days!  I love London, but in a way was glad to be going home soon.  Goes to show that it's not only third world countries like the Philippines that are vulnerable to such heinous acts of terror, it can happen anywhere and at anytime.
  

We travelled to England by train, from Calais. It only took us half an hour.
Ones on British grounds the first thing to do was driving to the left side of the road. Since I wasn't the driver, that was ok. Then on top of the list was finding a pub and finding our hostel. The first was far more easy than the second!

Our cottage wasn't at all what we expected. It was old, smelly and it had bugs living in it. It also had a shared swimming pool, yet one with water so dirty no one dared to dive in it. It hadn't been cleaned for ages! The only part of the area that was nice was the pool table... But it didn't really matter, we were in England anyway...

I spent 2 weeks in the UK in September 2007 with my best friends, Lauren and Beth. We had been staying in Paris and when we decided to come over to England we needed to find accommodation. We found a great website which covers just Kent - Let's Stay Kent at http://www.staykent.co.uk - and found a hotel just outside of Canterbury. We did all the usual sites - cathedral was incredible as was the town itself, so many timbered houses! We moved on to Rochester for the 2nd week - found a b&b through Let's Stay Kent - and explored the town. The Dickens' connections are great in this town - we had to drag Lauren away from some of the sites.  

Found great b&b hotel - King Street Hotel - through website called Let's Stay Kent, at http://www.staykent.co.uk. 5 Star and really friendly staff.

The first thing we had to do was find accommodation for the first 3 or 4 days. We were travelling down from Scotland initially and wanted a basic b&b tofind our feet for a couple of days. we did through a website called Let's Stay Kent at www.staykent.co.uk. They had a good choice of b&b - we chose one in Maidstone, close to the town centre called King Street Hotel. It was excellent! - 5 Star! It did not have a restaurant but that did not matter as it was so close to the centre of Maidstone. The owners were really friendly and advised us about the best places for meals and entertainment.

Leeds Castle, found in Kent, NO not Leeds! Confusing but hey these things happen. Leeds Castle is a beautiful restored lived in castle on masses of land that holds a large bird sanctuary from budgies to parrots to flamingos. The ground holds a golf course, dog collor musem and lovely little shops aswell as lived in cottages of the grounds men/women who care fot the estate. Throughout the year Leeds Castle holds many functions from mucis to craft to bomfire shows. I went this bomfires weekend and an adult is priced at £15, the grounds open at 12 with food stalls, little shop stalls, archery, bird shows and medevil shows that include jousting etc. It is great for a family day out or even a cuddley weekend with a partner due to the cold weather in Novembre! Many people take packed lunches with a large supply of sandwiches as you can spend all day there. The firework display is based on a story of a little dragon who grows up to produce flames all the colours of the world, a great story even for the grown ups!

Hever Castle was the family home of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII - unfortunately he had her executed supposedly on the grounds of her being a witch!!! The house is beautiful with a pond like moat running around the house filled with the most gigantic carp you've ever seen! And surrounded by stunning gardens with steps leading off into the prettiest secluded locations. You can take a tour the house into all the different rooms, it may be quite sick but I loved the room full of the ancient torturing tools!!! Man the Tudors were warped!!!