| last day here before i go off to paris! did quite a lot today. i did the premium tour today and saw windsor, stonehenge, and bath. quick notes on it all:
windsor castle- saw the guards, queen's favorite place to be (she loves to drive and often drives herself in a beat up car around, some tourists even saw her before since she almost ran them over and then got out of the car to apologize, can you imagine??), met Lana (this kewl girl from NY who's studying marketing and going to law school, we hung out all day and ate dindin together at McDonald's and no, they didn't call it royal with cheese), magna carta signed by john's son, articles of the...barons? by king john after richard died (our guide didn't think too much of richard since he apparently had hated london anyway and had taxed everyone tons and put the country into bankruptcy), albert's memorial only open 2x a year and you need to appyl to see it (he died after drinking water from windsor castle), jfk memorial plot (if you commit a crime here you can run there for safety for 3 days, interesting), queen elizabeth II also is apparently a great horse breeder and the ascot (like in my fair lady!) is held right close by, sad picture of charles I's 5 children with the gigantic mastiff
lunch-thatched roof of inn cost about 40,000 pounds (eesh, although apparently that's not a bad price), ate roast beef, yorkshire pudding (like bread that's in a bowl shape), gravy, carrots, cauliflower, green beans (veggies hooray!!), potatoes, all quite yummy, very quaint place, pretty gardens, low ceiling
stonehenge- windy, walked around in a big circle, cna't get close because ppl used to chisel off pieces (they were allowed to then), lush grass around, in the middle of nowhere, huge mounds of 'cemeteries' close by, 15 tons/stone, sculpted art, blue stnoes from mountains (which we saw later, they're close to wales) that were 240 miles away (wow! that's amazing considering tihs was pre-wheel and pre tools)
bath- loved loved loved bath, great town, saw where jane austen wrote Northanger Abbey and P&P, lil telephone looking box that was used to carry rich people around in (think old emperor carrying thing from chinese movies), oliver something or another had a vision about angels going up to heaven and designed that on the church, civil war so the roundheads shot off the faces of some of the figures on the church wall because that area elonged to the...parliament? or whatever, ate a brownie and got coffee (mwhaaha), bridge with shops over it, saw the roman baths (hot springs, roman tried encorporating local cultures, very neat)
driv ehome-traffic jam so it took us til 9:45/10 to get home when it shoulda been 8:30, drove through pennsylvania (neat town) in 1 minute,dry stone wall or summat that expands but when you put concrete on it it means death to the wall, sheep breeding with color dye, mountains, yellow oil harvest, crop circles, in any case steve was a fun tour guide nd i definitely recommend premium tours to anyone travelling in london |
