Bath/Stonehenge

Thanks, Mom, for reminding me to write about this trip. I had planned to, but it completely escaped my memory.

Last Saturday I went on a trip organized by BUNAC to Bath and Stonehenge which was set at a price I just couldn't pass up. We were all crammed into a double-decker coach, but I had some fun neighbors and the sleeping came easy. I went with another girl here who's LDS who's also doing the BUNAC thing and a fresh new boyfriend of hers. Luckily they're both really cool, so it ended up not being too awkward being a 3rd wheel (despite the fact that I was the first one to sign up anyway).

Apparently there was some miscommunication between the bus driver and the BUNAC people hosting the trip. We were supposed to go to Stonehenge first, but the driver took us to Bath first. This is going to come back later...

So we went to Bath first. The town was really pretty. All the buildings were yellow-ish and seemed to have a real Mediterranean feel to them. And the town was big enough to have everything a town could want, but it was still small enough to feel at home. It was nice to step outside of London for a bit. There was plenty of stuff to look at anyway, i.e. parks, architecture, landscape, river. But the main attraction of the city is the Roman Baths. During the Roman occupation of Britain (didn't know there was one) they built a few baths around a hot spring. Sounds like a great idea to me! :) Apparently it was more for worship than recreation. There was even a high priest actor there welcoming us to worship Minerva. The whole building has Roman statues and architecture. Those Romans were pretty smart! They had pipes that carried hot water from the spring to the main bath to keep it warm. They also had a really interesting method of heating houses which requires too much explanation. But it was all really neat to see and learn about. If you want to read about the city: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath,_Somerset

There's a Jane Austen museum there.

The program used for this blogging site is really bad, so I don't know how to organize my pictures than that.

So after Bath we got in the bus and headed over to Stonehenge. We got there at 4:55. It closes at 5:00. They wouldn't let us in, so we had to take pictures from outside the gate. We got a 5 pound refund, but that's still lame. We could only see one side and from a bit of a distance. I blame the bus driver. So I took what pictures I could. Stonehenge was really neat though. I've heard a lot of people talk it down saying it's just a pile of rocks, even our BUNAC host said that. But I was really fascinated by it! It's an organized pile of gigantic rocks out in the middle of a rockless field! Pictures just can't do it real justice.