Leeds Castle, Canterbury, Dover & Greenwich River Boat Ride Tour

​When I planned the Great Britain itinerary, I referred to Lonely Planet Great Britain. It such a complete and detailed guide a traveler can hope for. My knowledge about Great Britain was limited, and reading the places of interest it offers got me excited and confused at the same time. I was pretty much confused when deciding what to visit after London. When it comes to London, you can easily decide where to go because all the places of interests are within reach of underground train and London Pass give the freedom and guide to all the attractions. But when it comes to deciding what next attraction should be seen outside London, things got very trickier.

I could go east to Canterbury for Dover Castle and Leeds Castle and it’s about 2 hour from London, or I could go west to Exeter and Penzance but It would robbed one day to go there and back to London and waste another day while i was in UK. Orr, I could go north to Birmingham and Yorkshire. Luckily, I found a way to have them covered just about right. There are plenty of Day tour departs from London by Bus and the options are many. Following are several Tour provider that I looked up to:

• Golden Tours (link here: http://www.goldentours.com/day-trips-from-london)
• Grayline (link here: http://www.grayline.com/things-to-do/united-kingdom/london/)
• Evan Evans Tour (link here: https://evanevanstours.com/sightseeing-tours/day-tours-from-london/)
• Premium Tours (link here: http://www.premiumtours.co.uk/tours/subcategory/out-of-london-tours.id10.html)
• Day Tours London (link here: http://www.daytourslondon.com/)

And many others

After comparing some of those tours we select the Golden Tour providing Good review in Tripadvisor and price comparison. So one of the “day tour” I selected was Leeds Castle, Canterbury, Dover & Greenwich River Boat Ride Tour. We were picked up by this big bus at Langham around 8 am, and returned at about 6:30 pm. Here’s some places on the map that we visited.

This was the first castle I set my foot on, so I was EXTREMELY excited about it. Castle is commonly mixed up with palace and fortress. The difference is, Castle is usually fortified and a place to stay for noble while palace is not fortified and fortress hardly a residence for nobles. Castles are built in Europe and Middle east during middle age by nobility. There are six to seven hundreds castles in United Kingdom. You could find many articles in the internet about “ten most beautiful castles in UK”, but it depends on the eye and how deep experience you have on those castles. On this UK Trip, i went to 6 castles overall.

Leeds Castle was built on 12th Century, it’s surrounded by a river and parts of the castle were added as they change ownership by centuries. The latest owner of the castle back in 20th century was Lady Baillie.
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At that time, we didn’t use the main entrance. We used the side entrance instead with the paved walkway next to the river. Boy what a beautiful view it was !!

When I went inside, I felt like I rode a time machine back to medieval. The interior, the nuance is pretty much set up like it was in Medieval. I love how they set up the bedroom, reading room, and the hall way. It was immaculate, meticulous, and beautiful. If it wasn’t because of tour guide rushed us out, I would literally camp there overnight and living a royal life (~tra la lalalala ~)

This place was literally blew my mind! I lose my words over its EPIC ceiling and architecture. The building gothic style is sickening epic and awesome beyond words. I really don’t have words for that. Take a look at my pics and visit it. It was one of my happiest-above-all-happiest-time I had in UK. I LOVE Canterbury Cathedral.

The building is Christian Cathedral and is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site, was founded on 597 and rebuilt in 12th century. It’s 160 m long, and the choir height is 22 m.

Our tour didn’t include visit to Dover castle, so we just stop by the beach where we could see the Dover Castle from afar. And the Greenwich Thames Boat Ride was basically the same ride that we took the day before when strolling London City, So I won’t repost it here.