Stonehenge - This rock that is separate holds some significance, but what?
Welcome back to the story of my European adventure! For today's blog, we are going to focus on our second full day within the United Kingdom. More specifically, a day trip where we visited Windsor Castle, the city of Bath and STONEHENGE!
Once again, we woke up super early and made our way to the terminal where our tour bus would be found. While I do prefer to be in charge of my own exploring, it is fairly convenient to book an all day bus tour that can hit majority of your must-see locations. For this, seeing Stonehenge was our main mission, but seeing Bath and Windsor Castle were definitely a nice plus.
View of Windsor Castle from the 'long road'
Our first stop was Windsor Castle. With the recent death of the queen, we were unable to go
inside like most tours have the opportunity to do, but that was just fine. It was still amazing to see the beautiful building as well as the quaint town around it. Most of our time here we had free and walked around at our leisure - grabbing some coffee and stopping in some shops to buy souvenirs.
Around an hour later, we were hopping back on the bus where we would have another hour or so drive until we reached one of the ancient wonders of the world. When you arrive at the tourist center for Stonehenge, the monument is nowhere to be seen. That is because you have to then get on a bus that drives a mile to get to where the real location is. We were informed that this is due to the fact that the country wants Stonehenge to appear how it did thousands of years ago, without any civilization in sight to ruin the gorgeous view. (Although the highway off to the side is a bit of a giveaway - apparently the government is planning on creating an underground tunnel in order to hide this aspect.)
We were provided ear buds and a small audio device that would guide us through the overall history of the ancient structure. There is also a small path that allows you to walk around the entire monument in a wide circle, and it is neat to see this place from all of its angles. Apparently, once a year hundreds of photographers come to Stonehenge and are allowed closer to it in order to capture a picture of the sun rising/setting just between the large stacks of rocks. On this day, however, it was a cloudy (and rainy) autumn day, so we were not so lucky. Regardless, I did not want to leave when it was time to hop back on the bus. Hearing about wonders of the world such as this is one thing, but seeing it for yourself is another.
Cloudy day at Stonehenge
Finally we were heading to our final stop - the city of Bath. It was another lengthy bus ride as
we seemed to climb higher into the hills. But I will never be able to describe just how beautiful it was to see the city from so high up! All of the architecture and buildings are the same color and style, and the city itself seems so much larger than you would expect. The Roman baths are found here as well, but we did not get the chance to go inside to get a closer look at them. Instead, we spent a few short hours exploring the town, tourists buzzing about as individuals played some music here and there. Once we were hungry enough, we found a nice pub called The Huntsman where we had delicious food and drinks. Before we knew it, it was time for our tipsy selves to get back onto our bus to head back to London.
The day was long and our feet were aching, but it was so worth it to see more of England as well as a bucket list item for me such as Stonehenge. However, we couldn't relax just yet, as once we got back we had only mere hours before we were to head towards St. Pancras Station for our next adventure - a day trip to Paris!
"Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times."
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