Stonehenge, Salisbury, Stourhead

Email for June 16:

We ate a delicious breakfast of warm scones, yogurt, and fresh fruit at our Avebury AirBNB, served by the daughter at the house who just finished her A levels. Hilariously, we recognized her from the Red Lion pub last night. She was one of the people we asked to borrow a phone (to call her own house!). Small world. Or small village, rather.

Then we drove to Stonehenge. We got there 30 minutes after opening and managed to walk around the stones and get decent pictures before the deluge of people showed up. (Including the BYU Ballroom Dance Company!). They have a new visitor's center which was very nice and well done and they've re-routed the path to get us closer to the stones than the last time I was there ten years ago, so that was nice.

 

Can you find us in these these two pictures?:

From Stonehenge, we drove to Salisbury. We have now seen two of the four original copies of the Magna Carta on this trip (the other one was in the British Library). Salisbury is also home to the oldest working clock, which is always a fun thing. Also, the lady we sat by at the Globe last week told us about the infinity font at Salisbury, and now we know what that is. I really liked walking around Salisbury. We stopped in at Poundland and bough some Jaffa Cakes, some Jammie Dodgers, and a selection of McVities biscuits. We ate some of those in the car on the way to Stourhead.

Again, today was a bit drizzly, but it didn't rain on us at Stonehenge and the hardest it rained all day was when we were inside the Stourhead house. When we got out to the gardens, it was drizzling which was perfect because we could walk around without getting too wet and there were fewer people. The gardens are just as beautiful as always. The swans were out, the rhododendron trees were in bloom and they were giant!

After seeing it all at Stourhead, we drove to Bath. The traffic in and out of Bath is ridiculous. And then we, sort of by accident, drove through the Town Centre which was all crazy narrow one-way streets (as most town centers), but on top of crazy streets, it was crowded! Several times we thought we were driving into pedestrian only areas, but we weren't. We finally parked just outside the main area and walked all around. The Baths had already closed (we'll do those in the morning), but we walked the streets, saw the Circus and the Royal Crescent. We ate dinner at a pizza and pie place - Tom got a butternut squash sweet potato pie and I got a jerk chicken pizza. Then we drove up to the place we're staying tonight. It's right up on the hill in Bath and our bedroom downstairs has a view of the abbey out the window. We'll try to Skype with the kiddos before going to bed (though it's hard to predict how fast the internet is and if it will work. I guess we'll see.)

Leaving London

Email from June 15:

After breakfast at the hotel, we headed around the neighborhood. We went to the book shop around the corner and then walked down Portobello Road. I bought a skirt. We checked out of our hotel. It was a Doubletree. Did I mention their signature thing is cookies? They gave us warm, yummy, large chocolate chip cookies when we checked in, yesterday when we asked the front desk about something and then again today at check-out. Awesome. So, we ate our cookies as we walked to Paddington Station. We arrived just five minutes before our train was scheduled to leave, so we didn't get a picture of the Paddington station sign for the girls or find the statue of Paddington Bear that is apparently there. Though a large portion of the station was under renovation, so it may not have been accessible anyway.

The train out to Didcot was about 45 minutes long. I slept the whole way. We rented our car in Didcot and headed out on the road. Tom says driving on the left isn't very disorienting to him and that didn't take getting used to, oddly enough. But he did say the super narrow roads, and the speeds at which people drive on them, and navigating intersections are a bit tricky. But overall, he's doing really well and we drove all over today.

We started at the Uffington White Horse and Dragon Hill. The Uffington Horse is the oldest chalk drawing. In Neolithic times they would dig away the grass to expose the chalk underneath and draw pictures with it. We met a National Trust worker at the top of the hill by the horse. Because of the drizzle (and downpour right before we got out of our car), we were the only three up there. The horse is large and is sort of on top of the hill to face the Gods, he explained, so there isn't a way to see the whole thing at once unless you fly over it. From on the horse, however, you look down and get a great view of Dragon hill which is a perfectly round hill that's flat on top with a big chalk blob on the top. The legend is that the hill is where St. George fought the dragon and when he spilled the dragon's blood, it was so poisonous it burned the ground and nothing has grown there since. The guy said that while the horse requires a lot of upkeep to keep the grass from growing over it, the "burn mark" curiously requires a lot less. There was just a giant field of sheep to wlk through to get up to the horse and it had a gorgeous view over the farmlands surrounding it.

From the Uffington Horse we drove to Lacock and got there five minutes before the last admission to the abbey, so we ran around the amazing cloisters (Harry Potter film site) and then wandered around the grounds and the town.

Then we drove to Avebury which is just as picturesque. The standing stones are everywhere here. There is a giant stone circle that surrounds a big part of the town and then smaller ones off of that. We ate at the Red Lion pub which claims to be the only pub in the world that is in the center of a stone circle. We had fish and chips and Banoffee Pie (to compare to Tom's. Because Tom has been perfecting his recipe to my liking, his is now the perfect pie and is better than the one we had today). The food was good. The place we were staying was just around the corner, so we drove over there, but no one was home. So we had to come back to the pub and give them a call. They had taken the dog out for a walk and all was well, so we checked in. It's a lovely adorable house literally next to the stone circle. We dropped our stuff off and then walked around from about 8:30pm to 9:30pm until it was getting dark. We took pictures and hiked around the fields with stones.

Today was the first day in the UK I've had all the allergy symptoms at once (itchy eyes, post nasal drip, runny nose, and sneezes), so my eyes are exhausted.

St. Paul's, Tower of London

Email for Jun 14:

Today was crazy. As it was the last day we're here in the city, we had to do so many things! After breakfast at the hotel, we headed straight to St. Paul's. Today was the day of stairs. We hiked up all the stairs in St. Paul's. We heard each other whisper in the whispering gallery and then kept climbing all the way to the top of the dome. Beautiful views up there. Too bad London is under construction. There were cranes blocking all the main icons in our view, but it was still beautiful.

 
We were going to walk to the Tower of London, but we got caught in an absolute downpour, so we rode a bus most of the way there. We got off a bit early to go see St. Dunstan in the East, which is a cathedral ruin they've turned into a park. It was beautiful (and rainy!).

Then we got into the Tower of London. Because of the rain, the Beefeater did a 20 minute talk in the chapel and then we walked around on our own. The rain passed as we were in the chapel, so it was pretty lovely while we walked around. We saw the crown jewels and the other towers. The Beefeater told a story about a Bishop who had levied major taxes and was later executed, and he said "We're opposed to Taxation without...." and some of us said "Representation" and he said: "I see we have some Americans here with us today. You probably haven't understood a word I've said. Americans are great at history right up until the time the Bible ends. Then there's a big black hole until 1776. What we're talking about is in that hole. If you want to learn history, learn it from a country that's established!" We also saw a female Beefeater, which I've never seen, so that was cool. There were school groups performing on a stage by the white tower. It was strange hearing "there's no Business like Show Business" as we're walking around this really old tower.

From the Tower, we took the tube to the British Museum. We were short on time, so we raced through a few of the galleries and hit the "top 10" that is included with the map.

Tom wanted to stop by the original Hard Rock Café and maybe get a T-shirt, so I decided we'd go eat there. It turned out to be super fortuitous today because today is the 45th anniversary of the opening of the London Hard Rock Cafe! So for tonight only, they served the original menu at the original prices. So we got a cheeseburger and club sandwich for 60p each. Desserts were 40p. So with dinner, dessert, drinks and tip, we were only out 12 pounds! (Tom felt better about buying a t-shirt because of that). We sort of feel like this whole trip so far has been like this. We've been so lucky. There's been tons of rain, but we've only had to be out in it for a few minutes and never when we're actually needing to do something outside. Also, we walked into the Hard Rock Café around 4pm completely unaware of the event. Then we saw the menu. We each ate our dinners and our desserts. Then, just when we finished our desserts, a lady showed up with plates of birthday cake on our table. It was hilarious. When we got out of the restaurant, there was a huge line waiting to get in.

From Hard Rock Café, we walked from the Southeast Corner of Hyde Park all the way back to our hotel on the Northwest Corner. We had to drop off our camera before heading to Harry Potter (no cameras allowed).

Something I forgot to mention after the first Harry Potter: They apparently used an owl in the first preview last week, but it got loose in the audience, so they weren't allowed to use them anymore. That would have been cool.

Part 2: This play was less magical than the first, though the wizarding duels were much more convincing than the first one. The story itself was better. JK Rowling said if you didn't cry, she questioned your humanity. I didn't cry because we felt like the finale could have gone further. I really expected it to get to the point of tears, but it ended before then. The story itself was satisfying. It redeemed itself after Part 1 being somewhat predictable. I was distracted by one of the main characters saying: "prophesized" and "undoubtably" - I'll have to see if those are the actual words in the script when it's published. Overall, it was really fun to be there and it was very entertaining and a great story. Also really fun to be there with Harry Potter fans that reacted MAJORLY every time something was mentioned or someone appeared. GASP. It was hilarious and fun. And everyone went crazy at curtain call. The cast came out three times to bow. Overall, my favorite characters/actors were Harry and Scorpius . That's where I bought myself a t-shirt. As Tom said: "To make everyone in the world jealous."

We got back around 11pm and walked down Queensway just so I could walk around my neighborhood one last time.