To Caunterbury they wende

 Yes, that's a line from Chaucer.  We went to Canterbury Cathedral on the afternoon of our trip to Dover.  It's just a short drive away, and a bit of a long walk from the coach-parking lot to the middle of town.  The entrance to the Cathedral grounds is through this massive, beautifully carved old door.  It's just a door off the main square in the old town...

 ... but it leads to this!  The cathedral is beautiful, but quite run down.  And it was sad to hear the guides pleading for donations to restore it.  I mean, this is the seat of the Anglican Church, and it's falling apart!

 View of the cloister.  We're sitting on seats the monks sat and worked at for centuries.

Bet you didn't know Rotary International was gothic!!  (It's not.  But after WWII some American stonemasons volunteered to renovate parts of the cathedral, and they left their very 20th-century mark on it.)

 I do love a bossed fan vault.  Does that make me officially an architecture geek?

 If you look carefully, you'll see near the bottom a carved eagle, elephant, and donkey--symbols of American politics.  More work by those 20th-century volunteers.

 Stained glass in the "trade hall" of the monastery.  This was not a sacred space at all--more like a marketplace than a monastery.  But it was run by the monks anyway.  You might recognize Henry VIII (bottom row, second from left)

 View up into the tower of Canterbury Cathedral.  They started building it of stone, then as they got higher they realized it was going to be too heavy so they switched to wood.  I supposed they could've used straw if they wanted to go even higher.  Then the big, bad, wolf could blow it down.

 The nave (view from the choir screen)

 The Archbishop of Canterbury is head of the Anglican Church.  And there is his stone "cathedra" or seat, with a thin red cushion.  The chair is quite ancient, and apparently ready to fall apart.  It's only ever actually sat upon when a new Archbishop is consecrated, which will happen very soon because they just announced a new Archbishop of Canterbury a few days after we were here.

 Doesn't look very comfortable.

 This is the place where Thomas a Beckett's body used to be on display.

 This is apparently where J. K. Rowling got the inspiration for the snitch in quidditch.  Not sure if that's true.  It could just be a globe with wings. (And since I haven't read Harry Potter I'm not entirely sure what that's all about anyway.)  But the guide said this is the most photographed part of the cathedral.