Day 2 - London

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Today we got up early so we could go to Stonehenge. "Why are there no photo's of Stonehenge?", you might ask. Well that would be because by the time we got to Stonehenge, it felt like we were in the middle of a hurricane.

Let me back up to the beginning of our day....The morning started out as a fairly calm day. We arrived in the lobby of our hotel about an hour before we had to be at the "meeting" point for our bus to Stonehenge. We innocently ask the front desk clerk the best way to get to the meeting point on time. He sort of grimaced at us and said, "You didn't really give yourself a lot of time". At this point, we realize we are probably going to miss the tour if we don't figure out some other way to get to the meeting point besides the bus/tube. We kind of assumed the "bad" traffic we had on Saturday would not be that bad at 7:00am on a Sunday, but apparently you can't count on public transportation always being on time on the weekend.

Luckily for us, we got to meet Thomas, who owns his own car service, but works for the hotel when guests need transportation. Since we were in a pinch, we asked the hotel to call us a cab, but since Thomas had just happened to be dropping off some other guests, the concierge asked him if he could take us to our meeting point. We really don't want to pay for a ride to our meeting point, but since we had already paid for the trip and it was more expensive than the ride, we decided to go for it. In the process, we did get to meet Thomas. He was a very nice man that had just started his car service and was trying to make a go of it. He had a lovely black Mercedes that was a pleasure to ride in. I have to say it was much nicer than traveling by the bus or the tube and we got dropped off RIGHT at our meeting spot. We were actually even about 20 minutes early because Thomas knew ALL the back roads to take to avoid the traffic and the closed roades.

The ride to the meeting point was actually the nicest part of the entire trip to Stonehenge!!

There was a fairly large group wanting to go to Stonehenge that day. The trip was designed as meerly transport to the stones and admission to see them. There was no commentary or human guide once you got there. A very bare bones tour. The group was packed onto the tour bus which was just big enough for this group. Every seat was occupied. Since it was a cold and rainy day, the heat was turned on. At first, it felt very nice to feel the warmth, but after a few minutes it was sweltering on the tour bus. The stones are about an hour and a half outside of London, so for about an hour of that trip, everyone was very uncomfortable from the heat. Several people asked the driver to turn down the heat, but either he ignored them or because the heat had no place to escape, the temperature never really improved.


As we got closer to the stones, the weather outside got worse as well. What started out as a light rain, soon turned into a downpour. By the time we could see the stones through the window, we were in the middle of a full fledged storm with wind and heavy rain. The bus driver gave us these plastic rain ponchos as we left the bus and said we had an hour to view the stones. As we got off the bus, the rain started hitting us sideways because the wind was so fierce. We put on our ponchos and didn't even bother to open our umbrellas because we would have flown away like Mary Poppins.

By the time we walked to the entrance gate, I couldn't feel my fingers any longer and was pretty much ready for this trip to be over. We did manage to walk out to the stones and we spent about 2 minutes looking at them before walking back to the gift shop. I asked Jonathan if he wanted me to take a picture of him in front of the stones and he said he didn't want me getting my new camera wet. Basically we were both wet and cold and wanted to get out of the weather.

We walked around the gift shop for just a few minutes and Jonathan must have been miserable and cold because he didn't manage to buy anything. He hardly ever misses an opportunity to buy things. 😊

Fortunately there was a refreshment stand right next to the gift shop and we were able to buy some hot chocolate, coffee, and a sandwich. We walked back to the bus and the driver asked us not to get crumbs on the bus. Apparently you aren't supposed to eat or drink on the tour bus, but he was allowing us to do it since it was such a miserable day and we had no other place to get out of the weather.

I was pretty much ready to leave at that point, as well as many of the others, but some of the group decided to take the full hour and then some before making it back to the bus. We had to keep telling the bus driver we were missing some folks because he kept wanting to leave without everyone. You would have thought he would have taken a count of the group, but I guess that wasn't part of his job.

Eventually everyone made it back to bus and we started back to London. After about 20 minutes, the bus was so warm, it was almost hard to breathe. Eventually the bus driver turned off the heat and it started to feel a little more normal in the bus. When we were about a half hour outside of London, the rain stopped and the sun started shining. This is about the time the bus stopped moving because of the traffic. We saw about a mile of road for the next hour.

One of the tour group spoke up and asked if there was a place she could get off the bus because she had a flight to catch and was going to miss it if she didn't head to the airport. The bus driver said their was a bus stop up ahead and he would let her out there. He said if anyone else wanted to get off, we needed to have our stuff ready to jump off. Jon and I just looked at each other and started shoving stuff into our backpack without actually saying a word to each other. We both knew we wanted to get off the bus.

As soon as the bus stopped, about 80% of the occupants got off to see if they could fend better on foot rather than on the hot bus. We saw a tube stop adjacent to the bus stop, so we headed toward that. It happened to be right at a mall, so we decided to walk through the mall before getting on the Tube for our next destination.

We had decided we wanted to see the Hard Rock Cafe while in London, but it's not exactly in the most convenient location. After several Tube transfers and a couple of blocks on foot, we made it to the Hard Rock Cafe. We skipped the restaurant and went straight for the gift shop. I found a "London Guard Hard Rock" bear that I wanted and maneuvered my way to the check out counter to pay. The place was PACKED with people. I was second in line, but the lady in front of me appeared to be making about 10 different transactions. It is the Hard Rock Cafe and NOT walmart, so I'm not sure what her endgame actually was.

After paying for the bear, I asked Jonathan if he wanted to get something to eat or drink in the restaurant, but he was over the crowds at that point. We decided to head back to the room and get ready for dinner.

The hotel had made reservations for us at a restaurant called "Brown's" across the river from the hotel. The hotel offered complimentary transportation on the ferry to cross the river. Brown's is a "British" restaurant and we figured for our last night in London, it would be nice to have some local fare.

The ferry ride was very nice and we got to see the hotel from the other side of the river. Too bad all of our transportation in London could not have been as good as Thomas (our hired driver) and the ferry!

Once we got off the ferry, we walked to the restaurant based on our hotel clerk's map. He did a very good job describing how to get there and we found it without any problems.

The restaurant looked a little more formal looking than I expected it to be, but everyone inside was dressed casually, so we fit right in. Jonathan order a fish dish and I order a steak with truffle sauce. Jonathan's dinner was good, but mine beat it out that night. As soon as she brought my dinner, I could smell the truffles and it tasted even better! They cooked the steak perfectly and I ate every bite! We had a long talk with our waitress about the upcoming Olympics and she definitely had mixed feelings about it. She knew it was good for the ecomony, but also knew it was going to be a lot of work juggling all of those people especially in a restaurant environment.

After our lovely dinner, we headed back to the ferry and to our home away from home. We had a final drink in the hotel bar for our last night in London. Since the weather had improved since morning, we were able to sit outside near the river and see all of London lit up across the river. It was very beautiful at night!

Once we headed back to the room, we finished our packing and called it a night.

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