Stonehenge and Bath

For our weekly outing we headed to Stonehenge and Bath. I have been looking forward to this outing since we got our schedule at the beginning of the semester. Stonehenge has always fascinated me and I finally got to see it today! We had to leave the flats at 8:00. On the way to Stonehenge each one of us had to tell a favorite memory of the trip that we plan to tell our grandkids one day. It was fun hearing what everyone had to say though it took me forever to actually come up with something! There really are too many memories to just select one. I ended up talking about how we got to go to the Charlie St. Cloud premiere. The reason I picked it as a great memory was because it just shows how when you’re in a big city like London you can do so many amazing things as they are just part of everyday life here.

For the rest of our journey we watched Harry Potter. We were supposed to watch the sixth one but it didn’t work so we ended up starting the fifth movie instead. We are preparing ourselves as the premiere is this week! Once we got to Stonehenge we made our way around while Phillipa told us all about the stones. She talked about all the theories there are and the incredible feat it was to move the stones the miles upon miles to their final destination. No one actually knows what the stones were used for and we never will. I think that is what makes it so interesting. They are all perfectly positioned and for the time it was built only makes the place more amazing. I absolutely loved our visit to Stonehenge. If I were to talk about what I would tell my grandkids now it would probably be our visit there. We spent about an hour walking around the grounds…you really can’t get that close anymore but it was just as neat to see from a distance I thought.

From there we headed to Bath. It was about an hour drive and on the way we watched a little more of Harry Potter. (There is a reason for the entire HP which I will explain later.) In Bath people had the choice of grabbing lunch or going with Phillipa on a short tour of some of the interesting spots. Luckily I packed my lunch so I was able to go on the tour. We walked through the city and came to some famous architecture. The building had over one hundred pillars and consisted of thirteen houses in all. Next to the houses was a gray mailbox. It can’t be painted red because the area is used in several films. A red mailbox would give the location away! A little ways away we got to see some similar housing where Nicholas Cage once lived and might still live. To live in these homes it costs anywhere from four to five million pounds! I would love to live in Bath because it is absolutely beautiful but I very well know I’m not going to get to live in those houses!

After our short tour we made our way to the Roman Baths where we were set to take a tour. People ended up being late so while we waited for them we went through the Abbey that was right next door. While we were walking through a little girls and boys choir was singing and practicing their dance moves for what I’m assuming will be a performance later. It was fun watching them rehearse. By the time we went through the church everyone else was back so we headed inside for our tour to begin. We just had audio guides so we got to take our time and go through at our own pace which was nice. The baths were quite impressive for their time…they are still impressive to this day! The neatest part about the whole thing was that the water in the baths is actually the same water that was used hundreds of years ago. Because of this we weren’t allowed to touch the water though Jeana put her hand in! Another fun thing was that at the very end we were able to toss a coin in one of the baths. Then as we made our way out we got to go taste the bath water. It’s completely pure water and it’s warm so it was pretty disgusting but it’s supposed to make you healthy! A lot of people are sick right now so hopefully it helped them!

We didn’t have much time in bath since we left right after we all turned in our audio guides. We then headed to a small town called Lacock. The reason we went there was because a lot of filming for the Harry Potter movies was done in this little town. The town was adorable. We got to see the church where several of the scenes were filmed. Some other people made their way to one of the houses that was used in the filming too. It was just a short stop that was an extra bonus and helped break up our trip for the way home. The little town was definitely somewhere I could live someday. From there we got on the coach to head home. We of course finished up the rest of the fifth Harry Potter movie and have since put in the fourth. We are all gearing up for the premiere and then our group outing to see the movie the following week!

Soon we will be home and then we are all cracking down to finish up our assignments that are due on Monday because Jeana and I are headed to Paris tomorrow! We have to figure out what we are going to do while we are there tonight as well but we are getting excited. I remember booking the trip and thinking the time was so far away when we were going to go but time has flown and I can’t believe we are going already!