Monday, December 13, 2010

Over the Hill!!!

Well, the big 30 has has come and went. Well I guess maybe its just here, not sure how you go about counting the year that you are 30, but either way. I have to say Kristen really outdid herself this weekend. Hopefully she will be ok with planning her own birthday weekend, because I won't be able to top this.

Super tired this morning, staying up to post Saturday's adventures was a bad idea. But Kristen made her now famous pancakes for breakfast, and poured a big glass of DPZ, soon enough us was ready to go. But where?? Kristen told me that she was going to take me to see something that was older than me to make me feel not so bad about being 30. Not the most enlightening little nugget of information. At this point I had no idea what was going on, and even as we rode the tube and walked to our destination I was confused. Finally she stopped and said, 'we are here'. Now I was really confused, as we were standing outside of a grocery store. Well more percisely we were standing outside of the tour company, but at the time I didn't know that. She graciously took pity on my ignorance and filled me in on the plans for the day. STONEHENGE, Salisbury, and Bath. Would have never guessed/figured it out, not in a million years. Jumped on the coach and we were off. It was an interesting group on the tour, very multicultural. Japanese, Greek (These two ladies sucked), Spanish, Italian, and a handful of English speakers. Our bus driver was named Bob, and wore a riduculus straw cowboy had that looked like he stole from some little kid on the tour the day before. I guess Stonehenge was about an hour and a half outside of London, but didn't feel like more than 30 minutes or so.

Its amazing just how, in the middle of nowhere the Henge is. You are driving down a narrow rode in the English Countryside, and then bam, you are there. Small gift shop and a big parking lot. If you nodded off you could easily miss it altogether. There were cars pulled off the side of the roads that didn't want to pay for admittance, and a half dozen or so tour buses full of tourists like us. I am going to skip the history lesson because pretty sure everyone knows their Stonehenge facts, and really how much new information can there be about a 4000 year old monument. Really a amazing place, just kinda stood there and stared at the stones with my mouth hanging open for 30 minutes or so. Could have been there all day and not have gotten bored with it. But we only had 50 minutes, and had to get back on the bus.









Next we were off to Salisbury. At this point I still had no idea what was there except for steaks. (Sorry bad joke) Anyway, our guide William gave us the lowdown on the quick ride into town, and I have to say I was pretty excited. A quick stop at The Cloisters, a little pub that has been around in one form or another for 250 years, for lunch and then off to the cathederal. Its amazing to see so many amazing churchs in just about every town. The Salisbury Cathederal gets to claim a number of bests and biggests making it a popular attraction. Unfortunately they were having a choir concert to we didn't get to take a full tour, but got to see the highlights. The Church is still has the tallest spire in Britain, and is the tallest in the world built prior to 1400. Britian's oldest clock, built in 1386 sits in the naive, and while it looks more like parts to a tracter or something, they say it keeps pretty good time. Seems like I say this alot, but sorry no pictures of the highlight of the church. The best preserved of only four surviving original Magna Carta (written 1215), is housed in the chapter house next door to the church. It was written in latin so you couldn't really tell what it said, but of course if you really wanted to get all details the gift shop would sell a copy for £15.



From there we headed down the road again to Bath, There was lots of nice English countryside to see during the trip, and driving down the valley into town looked like something out of a movie. The name of the town, and purpose for our visit was the Roman temple to the Goddess Sulis Minerva, (Roman Baths). Originally, built around the year 65 it was amazing to see their ingenuity. Lead pipes, to move hot water between rooms, and radiant heating in the floors, hell our house barely stays warm and we have 2000 years of technology. They say that the Roman baths were flooded and buried under silt around 600.



A quick stop on the way to the bus at the Bath Abbey was witness to another impressive ancient church. We apparently snuck in the back door and were politely asked to leave only to walk outside and come straight back in through the front door.



It was a long trip back home, and we got stuck in traffic to make the trip even longer, which was sort of a drag. End of the day though it was a one in a million birthday. I gotta say that I hope she plans her own birthday becasue there is no way I will be able to top this one.

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