Gloucester Cathedral

When my friend, Creedance, asked me what I wanted to see/do while visiting her in England, I did a little search on the internet to find out what was around where she lived. Months before I ever even planned on going to England, I'd pinned a few things on Pinterest of places I'd like to go someday. Turned out three of the things I'd pinned were in driving distance of Birmingham! Yippee!

So we headed off to Gloucester Cathedral. Now, I am not normally one to want to go see a big European church. I've often said in the last fifteen years, "If you've see one big European church, you've pretty much seen them all. With a few exceptions." Exceptions like the Batalha in Portugal, Westminster Abbey in London, and Notre Dame in Paris, to name a few. Gloucester is an exception. I thought it would be because of the cloisters, but I found that it had more to offer than just the cloisters.

First, there was a very weird (and sometimes LOUD) art exhibit going on. I didn't really love most of the modern art...except for this maze of old books! Just my thing.

One of the things that really struck me was the floor in the room with the misericords (mercy seats for prayer and study). The floor told the story of the Old Testament in beautiful tiles. It was truly beautiful.
King Edward II is buried there. I didn't know who he was. I read about a paragraph of Wikipedia and realized...I don't care. He's no King Arthur.
And then...the cloisters. Oh, the cloisters. So spectacular! I just couldn't get enough of them.

We didn't really go see anything else in Gloucester. We had two more small villages to go see that day, so this was a "see the thing and run" visit. I'm so glad that we went though. I'll dream of those fan-vaults for months to come...