Leeds Castle-- not in Leeds, but suuuper cool!

As part of the Arcadia/Nikki/Kent-area adventure, we went to Leeds Castle. Leeds Castle is AWESOME. If you are in England for a while, you should make your way up there. Also, it is not in Leeds. I KNOW. Dumb. It's in Kent. Just accept it.

I was very tired today, and we'd just been to Canterbury, so I was a little delirious, but I found all the little bits of energy I had left when I saw friggn PEACOCKS running around outside!!! Seriously, they were ALLLLL over the place!!! They had both the colored ones and the white ones and they were sooooo neat... wow, how five years old was that... HMMM, anyway, we had to walk down this trail along a lake to get to the castle itself from the car park. Because the castle is located in the middle of a spread of very green grass, the lake I just mentioned, and other castle-grounds-type surroundings, it looks pretty majestic. We had to rush through the castle itself because the trip planning people didn't block in enough time for us here, but I didn't mind. The inside is very much like any other castle you'll see-- tons of rooms decorated to look like how they did back in the day. Behind the castle is where all the cool stuff is. There's a huuuuge aviary (someone show Connor all the bird pictures, because I took them for him!) with sullen looking (I have an issue with zoos) birds from all over the world. That explained the peacocks everywhere. And the black swans in the pond. Hmm. Akin to Cari's blog about Leed's Castle, the hedge maze and grotto are the best part. The maze is tricky for about ten minutes. It does freak you out for a minute though, when the thought that maybe you won't be able to find your way out passes through your mind. After you finish the maze, though, you end up at the top of this mound, which is also where the stairwell to the grotto is. I didn't really know what a grotto was. I just heard it was cool. The internet dictionary tells me the following: a small cave (usually with attractive features). That sounds pretty right on. This place was, as my friend Greg would say, WICKED cool. It was this underground cave covered in shells in different designs with statues, and, according to this card thing we picked up, everything in there is symbolic of the elements and stuff like that (very eloquent, I know... after taking a break from writing these, I seem to have lost any grasp on rhetoric I may have had before). Anyway, it was really cool, and I made Nikki go back through it with me because it was so cool. When I have a house someday, I think I will have a grotto.

Verdict: Leeds Castle is cooler than Canterbury.