A Day Trip to Stonehenge and Bath

This past Friday I was able to be an unapologetic tourist at Stonehenge and Bath! These two sites were so different, but they were both incredibly memorable. I booked the day trip through a tour website, so I was with an entire bus of people that was led by a tour guide named Nick who had the cheeriest laugh and would chuckle after all of his own jokes! I even got a video of it, near the end of the tour which I have attached below :D.

Unfortunately at Stonehenge I didn't have time to grab an audio guide because we were on a tight schedule, but I look forward to watching documentaries about the site and truly being able to picture the area now that I have been there. It's difficult to imagine how these sorts of ancient sites would have looked like thousands of years ago and how the local people would have interacted with them. Sometimes I just wish that I had a time machine and could walk among the people of the past and see history through their eyes. A TARDIS would also come in handy (any Doctor Who fans out there?!).

After we left Stonehenge, we headed over to Bath which is a city famous for the Romans, Jane Austen and also for its Italian-style architecture. I was especially excited to tour the Roman baths which were much more extensive than I had expected! As you can see by the green water in the pictures below, they are extremely old and have been exposed to all sorts of gross entities. It was actually pretty funny - we had just gotten a talk from the tour guide who told us not to touch the water because it's completely nasty with mold and other things, and just when I turned around to actually see the baths, a few birds flew over and they pooped right into the water! I mean, my goodness! No respect, haha. In one of the pools though, they encouraged people to throw in coins and make a wish, so I happily participated.

We also went on a walking tour through the most famous parts of Bath - most notably the "Royal Crescent" which can be seen in many films such as Jane Austen's Persuasion (set almost completely in Bath). The tour guide even pointed out a house that Austen had lived in for a few years - it's the one with a number 4 by the door below. Overall, it was a great trip and I met some cool people along the way. I had a long conversation in the bus on the way back to London with a woman from Austrailia and a guy from Indiana about my age about the differences between school systems in America and schools in other parts of the world. Truly enlightening. And the countryside was so beautiful. We kept passing the most charming cottages and I couldn't help but imagine myself living in one someday. We shall have to wait and see!

I'm still loving the Oxford life by the way, and I promise that I will put pictures up from here soon. But I will just say that I had true British afternoon tea for the first time today, and I think that it's definitely something that I could get used to! Farewell for now.

Olivia