Tour of Bath, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle

First day in London, we have a day-long (really, really day-long: 14-hour) tour of Bath, Stonehenge & Windsor Castle tour. This picture is of the Roman Baths in Bath. Our transfer driver picked us up at 8:15 a.m. in the pouring rain. I had been forced to buy an umbrella (I would have thought they'd make them better than this in LONDON!) as I seemed to have left my really nice Seattle umbrella somewhere on the property of the Italian Villa. I'll chuck it just before we leave to come home.

We get a late start as we need to wait for the tour company to find us a bus. Hmm. Turns out we get a brand new one that doesn't even have the company logo painted on. It was nice and our tour guide Steve is very knowledgeable and quite witty. He's been in the business for 25 years and is hellbent on making up that hour we've lost. Here's his website: http://steve-tourguide.com/ It has a lot of interesting pictures and information there. We can tell he is a seasoned tour guide as he proceeds to tell us all about the London sights on the way out of town to Bath which we hear again when we take the big Hop-on-hop-off London city bus tour.

First stop is Stonehenge. Turns out that a few years ago they discovered that it wasn't extra terrestial or a sacrificial offering ground. It was a grave yard. They had the stone part, what's left as we see it today, which signifies death, and a replication of it built out of wood, with little houses built. People would save their dead (either cremated, or boiled clean bones) and meet there twice a year. Once at the winter solstice and again at the summer solstice but only if they had anyone from their tribe die during one of those times. They know this as there are several sites they have excavated and found bones. Read Steve's website for more info. Pretty interesting stuff.

We pre-order lunch from the bus via Steve's cell phone and stop at a wayside restaurant. Andy has the bangers and mash (sausage with mashed potatoes smothered in lots of onion gravy). Julie and I have the pork. We get exactly 45 minutes to eat and have to rush back onto the bus to continue on to Bath.

Bath was interesting as well. Back in the 17 & 1800's rich people would go there to recover from the pollution in London, but several years ago they excavated it and found the actual Roman baths and have done a pretty good job of restoring quite a bit of them. I would like to go back and spend additional time there as the city is quite charming.

We are all quite tired by the time we get back to the station. It was a good day.