Day 3 - Stonehenge

Woke up in London yesterday. Found myself in the city, near Piccadilly; don’t really know how I got here.*

This morning, we took a train from London Waterloo to Salisbury (following our victory at the self-serve ticket booth, where we picked up the tickets we reserved in the States). On said train, we discovered that trains put us to sleep just as well as cars do, if not better. After about an hour and a half train ride, we arrived, and soon found the bus that would take us to Stonehenge. (Sara says, “Stonehenge was cool. That’s my contribution. I took lots of pictures.”) The bus ride itself was actually part of the tour, as a recording narrated the journey, explaining points of interest and a bit of the history of Stonehenge/the area.

One of the many, many pictures, from one of many, many angles.

We arrived at Stonehenge itself about 11:30. We got audio tour devices (in English, although they were available in nine other languages as well), and commenced our visit. We walked around the path that circles the stones, and heard about the construction (“No one really knows how it was constructed” and then heard about the myths, and then about the purpose, which, as Sara puts it, “No one knows either.”) Anyway, it was interesting, and we took pictures from various angles while generally ignoring (accidentally) when we were supposed to switch to the next audio recording. We also saw many barrows, as that area has the most barrows per square mile of any other place in Britain (connection: Fellowship of the Ring). We walked around twice, mainly so we could get people to take pictures of us together, so we have proof we didn’t just sort of Photoshop one of us in all the time (replacing the other).

A picture a nice German lady took.

On the bus ride back to Salisbury station, the recording mentioned the different types of barrows that could be seen from the road, as well as some brief histories of the people who were buried there. We also saw Old Sarum, which was the original settlement of the area, before the people moved down towards the river and founded Salisbury.

Once at the train station, we realized that we had missed our train to the southwest (to Highbridge-Burnham-on-Sea), so we got tickets back to London, intending to go on the 13:21 train. We arrived at the platform to see the train pull away. Thus, we missed the second train of the day (they are very punctual about their trains’ departure times). Luckily, there was another train about half an hour later, so we took that one instead, and slept a bit more. I also tried to read the headlines of the paper that the person across the aisle from us was reading.

We arrived back in London about 15:15 and headed back to the hotel to obtain our Eurail passes and train information. Then, we took the Tube to Piccadilly and spent at least a half an hour at the Rail Europe center there, which we had happened across when we were in Piccadilly yesterday. (The travel agent helping us asked at the end how we had heard of them, and we had to answer that we just stumbled across them while we were passing by.) The upshot of this is that we now have reservations! Yay! So although we did not see a moor, we did see a bit of the English countryside, and we know we will be able to get to all the various cities in France and Spain that we need to. All in all, a victory.

After obtaining our tickets (hurrah!!!), we ate lunch/dinner at Costa, which is a huge coffee-shop brand in England. (Shout out to Jay, who ate lunch there basically every day when he was at Cambridge.) I would like to note that it was very good and that they don’t crowd their sandwiches with all of the nonsense American brands seem to. Fed and watered, we went back to Piccadilly station, where, to quote Sara, "Miel abandoned me." Basically, the proper train was about to leave, I got on, and when I turned to see Sara, whom I thought was right behind me, I saw a closed door, with Sara on the other side of it. Horrors!!! I waited by some chairs near the "Way out" sign, and about two minutes later, SARA ARRIVED!!! "We were saved." (Also, the British don't have "Exit" signs, just "Way out" ones, which is absolutely charming.)

There are over 90 different types of lichen on the Stonehenge stones.

Reunited, we wandered back to our hotel, searching for any coffee shop with free WiFi. We found one a block from our hotel, and came back to write this up and upload our pictures of the day. Now off to the coffee shop so we can enlighten our DEAR READERS! [Note: they have good hot chocolate.]

- Miel & Sara

 

*For the musically unenlightened

P.S. Feel free to comment! We'd love to hear from you! (That means you, Kaitlin.) (And the rest of you all, too, please.)