Europe 2004: Post 2 - Stonehenge, Bath, and Salisbury

(Once I figure out how to do it, I'll add pictures to all my Europe posts - they're pretty great pictures, so check back!)

Tonight I'm going to write about a 1-day trip we took in England. It was through a tour company; although we planned the Europe vacation on our own, we often went through tour companies for day-long adventures. So this adventure was a day-long ride on a coach - NOT a bus, a coach, insisted the guide - to the towns of Salisbury, Bath, and wherever Stonehenge is.

While on the ride from London to Stonehenge, the guide was talking to everyone over the speaker while the driver kept to himself. She was very funny and made frequent jokes, making the trip more enjoyable. She asked everyone where they were from, and eventually gave up.

"Okay, who on here is from America?"

All but about 4 of us raised our hands.

"That explains a lot!"

We laughed.

So eventually we made it to Salisbury. It was what you'd call a classic English town in the middle of nowhere. The main attraction there is Salisbury Cathedral, which is absolutely BEAUTIFUL! As we were getting off the coach, we were told to be back by a certain time or we'd be left behind.

They meant it... we left a family behind! In the middle of nowhere. With their belongings on the coach. It was quite upsetting when we realized that the guide wasn't joking as she took attendance at the predetermined time, couldn't find that family, and we left anyway.

Next was Stonehenge. Now, I was the only one in the family with a digital camera, and I was pretty good at taking pictures. Photography is the ONLY art form that I'm not hopeless in, and I take those pictures that you have to get into weird positions to take but they end up looking really cool. Anyway, my stepdad's biggest wish on the ENTIRE vacation was to see Stonehenge. Although I didn't really understand why that was the most important, we were each allowed to pick one thing that meant the most to us that we got to do, and that was his. So I had to take plenty of pictures for him.

Stonehenge is cool, but in the end, it's a bunch of rocks.

And I took over 40 pictures of... well... rocks.

They all look the same to me, but hey, if that's what my stepdad wanted, so be it. :-P

I've got to admit, it WAS kind of cool to see how big those stones were and wonder what it was all about. But, in the end, I was happy to be on the coach and on our way to Bath.

So as we're approaching Bath, the tour guide comes on and says, "Look! Look! Over there!"

She pointed to some mountains.

"That is Wales!"

It was cool to see another "country" but be so close yet so far. Looked like America, but hey, it was cool anyway.

As we crossed over the bridge into Bath - the Jane Austen town - there's this bridge that has stores on it. It's like a continuation of any town street, only the stores are on the bridge with the road. I've never seen that before, so I enjoyed it.

Once in Bath, we went to the Roman Baths. There are some ancient ruins there, so it was VERY cool to see the old building foundations and the baths the Romans made. My sister & I fed some pigeons, got yelled at for bringing McDonald's into a nice restaurant where our parents were eating, then took the looooooong ride back to London. It was nearing sunset when we got there, and this was in July so it must've been fairly late.

Once in London, the tour guide came to the back of the bus - sorry, coach - and talked to our family. We'd hung out at the back so we could hear each other talk & play travel games. She asked us about our life in the U.S. and we asked about hers in the U.K., and she informed us that we were "very welcome" for our independence.

Didn't really know how to respond to that!

At the end of the day, we tipped the driver - Mr. Michael. As the tour guide informed us, "This is not a bus, it's a coach. And that makes Mr. Michael a coach driver. And coach drivers are gentlemen." Looking back, I don't know why we thought that was so funny, but my sister & I put it on our list of "Quotable Moments" to look back on. That and the conversation we had with the tour guide when discussing our horse: "You have a horse you can't let outside for fear of it killing itself? Only in America!"

All in all, it was a great day. The ride was kind of boring, but well worth it in the end, as the 3 places we got to see were very lovely. And even though at the time I just thought it was a pile of rocks on a windy & chilly day, I'm glad we went to Stonehenge, just because it's one of those places people talk about, everyone knows what it is, but not everyone gets to go.

Kind of like the Eiffel Tower, or all of France, really, in that I'm glad I went but I'll probably never go back.

The U.K., however, is VERY high on our list of places to return. We'd like to revisit some of our favorite places & go to some places we either didn't know about, forgot to see, or didn't have time for. Although we took TONS of video in addition to our 450 pictures, we'd like to record some more as well. The only place we REALLY don't want to go back to is France. They say outside Paris, it isn't so anti-American, but as we were only in France for half a week, we spent the whole time in Paris, and HATED it. Not disliked, hated.

I'm glad we went - we saw the Eiffel Tower, Versailles (gorgeous!), the Arc de Triumphe, the Louvre (the museum, don't know how to spell it), and cruised down the river that goes through Paris (Sienne, maybe?), plus we got to ride through the Chunnel - the tunnel under the English Channel. We even drove through the tunnel Princess Diana crashed in. But those are all things that once you've seen them, you've seen them, and we hated the way we were treated in Paris so much that we'll not be going back.

Next Europe post, I'll write about France!