July 11, 2007

Indian Cafe
Salisbury
7/11/07
1:45 PM

I'm not entirely sure if it's okay to write while I'm sitting here.  It's kind of a nice restaurant.  But I"m the only customer right now, so I'm taking the liberty.

Today I'm visiting Stonehenge.  But when I got to the train station at Salisbury, I saw an enormous cathedral spire in the distance, so I decided to go exploring.  It's beautiful, but almost entirely touristy now.  I went to a part of their noon service, but in the end I was just struck by how commercial it all was.  Fortunately they at least had candles for me to light; I lit a couple for Gina.

In Spain, after Luxembourg, Gina & I spent one day wandering the downtown parts of Valencia & visited their famous churches, whatever they were.  In most of them I was actually disgusted & repulsed by their prostitution to the tourism industry.  But the crux of the thing was--they had electric "candles."  You couldn't light a simple candle for someone.  You'd put in the coins and a little electric light would light up.  I refused.  Those churches actually made me angry.  This one--the Cathedral of Salisbury--interested me, and somewhat saddened me, but didn't hurt like the others.

Salisbury apparently has one of the 4 surviving Magna Carta copies.  I guess it was mis-filed in a library & survived here at the cathedral until it was discovered in the 1900s.  Funny circumstance.

The

(Editor's Note: nothing further)