Salisbury Cathedral

This morning we set out for Salisbury. Well, after I made a pit stop at Cafe Nero. They had a few new seasonal offerings so I tried the Spiced Orange Latte (and next I want to try the Winter Berry Latte). Chris scoffed at these fru fru drinks but I thought they sounded good! I couldn't believe how quickly we got there--just 40minutes! Last time we went through there, we got stuck in traffic and it was seriously 1.5-2hrs! It was so relaxing just going for a nice drive, sitting in my cozy sweatshirt dress, drinking my latte.

Here we are walking towards the cathedral:

There was a church service going on so we just perused the grounds, cloisters and gift shop and then walked an out of the way loop trying to find the city centre. 

We popped into a few shops super quickly and then had lunch at Cafe Rouge. I had been wanting to try this French place out for quite some time (it's a chain, I've seen it in Westbourne, Bath, Bristol, Brighton, and Bournemouth) so I was excited to see they had it here! It did not disappoint, we were saying that it was the best food we'd had in England.  It was cutely decorated with lots of red accents and family friendly. They gave Ethan and Hailey a kids menu/activities sheet and this cool stackable color crayon thing (how perfect for traveling!) and they gave the kids each a balloon when we left (which seriously was the highlight of their day-it's amazing how much kids love balloons). Chris got Croque Monsieur and I got Beef Bourguignon and we shared this bread sampler platter, all of which were delicious! Okay, we are big fans of Cafe Rouge now. A gentleman came up to us at one point and complimented the kids on how well-behaved they were at the restaurant. What a good feeling. It was a really good day today, I felt like we had a lot of fun joking around as a family and not as much trying to get them to behave or deal with issues. 

Then we returned to the cathedral. It's funny, I've been reading Bill Bryson's "Notes From A Small Island" and he talked about how they have a pretty steep suggested donation for this cathedral and they give you a heavy ask as you enter. But that it was very well preserved and one of the finest buildings in all of the UK. He was right on the money! It was like £7.50 per adult suggested donation. We had the option of the £5 or £20 note from Chris' wallet and well, we went for the smaller of the two. So we joked about how we were doing the quick £5 tour. (Like there is any other option with kids in tow anyways). :) 

Model of the cathedral:

The oldest working clock in the world!

Flash VS no flash (they are just different, show different detail), I can't decide which I like better:

This was my favorite part, actually--these cool bright orange lanterns hanging with Chinese lantern blossoms strung from each of them:

Some tombstones in the cloisters. I found it interesting that each was very different in design:

And then we found the Magna Carta after asking someone. I don't know how we missed the Chapter Room this morning, we walked right by it. There are 4 remaining copies of the Magna Carta and I guess this one is the best preserved of all of them. Kind of crazy to see this 800 year old document written in Latin.