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Kelly and I returned from our trip last night. We had a fantastic time, and it both felt like a long and short trip. I both wanted to stay longer and wanted to get home as I was heading to Gatwick airport yesterday morning. 🙂

Since my last post, Kelly and I left York (Sunday, May 28) and drove south / south-east to Canterbury. We arrived about mid-afternoon, and after driving in circles through the maze of the town we found our hotel, and had time to check out the massive Canterbury Cathedral. The town itself (at least, the old part) reminded Kelly and I of York, only on a much smaller scale. It has a charming main street (High Street), with quite a few shops, pubs and restaurants. We could have easily spent another day here, but up until two nights before we left home we weren’t even planning on coming to Canterbury at all. We’re both glad we did and would like to go back someday.

After leaving Canterbury (this would have been Monday morning) we drove about 30 minutes south-east to view the magnificent White Cliffs of Dover. If the weather hadn’t have been so poor (it would pour down rain, and then get sunny for brief periods) I’d have loved to walk out further than we did, but as it was the trails were muddy (this pale clay like mud from the chalky ground) so we only walked a short distance. We did get some great photos though. After spending some time at the white cliffs we drove on to Brighton. The weather was nice as we got into town and found our hotel with little trouble. The hotel was just off the waterfront, and just around the corner from the Brighton Palace Pier, and walkable to the Brighton Pavilion and an area known as "The Lanes" which are filled with shopping, restaurants, and of course, pubs. We both relaxed yesterday and got our bags packed ready so we could leave early yesterday morning for Gatwick airport.

The flight to Newark was good and the 6 hours 40 minutes went pretty quick. After a couple hours wait in Newark we boarded the flight for home, and as the plane got out on the runway the pilot announced that due to a thunderstorm brewing off to the west we would have to wait a bit. Well, we ended up waiting nearly 2 hours, in the plane, before finally taking off. The thunderstorm from the sky however was really impressive… large masses of white and grey and black clouds all in different layers, and frequent lighting bolts inside. We arrived in Portland at about 10:30pm, and got home after 11:00pm (thanks to our friend Miranda who picked us up), unpacked a bit and had a great sleep in our own bed again.

That’s it for now. I’m working on getting photos copied off of my iPod so I can sort through them all. Hopefully I’ll get a page built for the trip and posted to my photos site shortly.