Advertisement
Published: January 22nd 2009
Edit Blog Post
FIRST DAY!!!
here we go! it's our first day of our England adventure! I landed in England on December 17, 2008 and was really excited to see Greg Dunbar when he came to the Gatwick airport to pick me up. I spent some time with the Dunbar's in Billericay before I went to the airport to meet Amanda. Mostly I spent my days catching up on some reading and sleep and hanging out with the Dunbars. I went with Greg to the neighboring town and walked the high street, then ate dinner at the Kings Head, a local pub. I also went out with Lisa to do last minute Christmas shopping. Amanda flew into Heathrow airport on December 20 and I was so excited to see her!! We spent that evening with the Dunbars and left early the next morning to begin our sightseeing adventures in England.
We took the train from Billericay to London first thing in the morning and then caught the tube to meet up with our tour group. We had pre-arranged a tour to go to Windsor, Stonehenge and Bath. We were running late on the tube and had to go grab a cab for the rest of the journey. Our cabby was so funny and was helpful in
Windsor!
the castle from the train station showing us the sights as he drove. He gave us many words of wisdom and started our trip out on the right foot! We met up with our tour bus and headed first for Windsor! It was really nice having our first day managed for us; we really didn't have to decide what to go see and we didn't get lost because everything was planned for us.
In Windsor our main sightseeing item was Windsor castle, but the town was pretty cool too. There were many little shops and pubs around that I wish we had more of an opportunity to see. First our guide gave us a bit of a tour outside the castle and then when we got our audio guides we had about 2 hours to look around the castle. There is no doubt in my mind that you could have spent an entire afternoon here, but we just had so many things scheduled on our trip. In Windsor castle we saw a room full of royal memorabilia like crowns, books, and photos. We also had the opportunity to see Queen Mary’s dollhouse, which is an accurate miniature; everything is 1/12 real size and completely functional!
Tower #1
i may have about 20 tower pictures...i will try to limit them...hehe All of the electricity and water works, the electrical appliances also work! There was also a room full of china used for different occasions. Next we were able to view the State Apartments and entertaining rooms. There were several rooms decorated with weaponry and extravagant carpets and furniture. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures in here, so you will just have to take my word for it! I wish we could have spent some more time here because the rooms were so beautiful, but we didn’t have enough time to listen to our entire audio guide explaining the history. We walked around the grounds a bit before heading back to the bus and saw some of the immaculate gardens and St. George’s Chapel that was also located on the grounds. The entire place was so huge! We were only allowed to see about a 1/3 of it.
Our next location on our tour was to go to the Stonehenge pub for lunch before we went and saw the monument. We ate chicken pie and enjoyed the pub atmosphere, well as much as we could with our large tour group! After a brief moment of thinking our bus
Tour guide
she had this amazing ducky umbrella was broken down for good, it started and we were able to make our way to Stonehenge. Stonehenge is in the middle of no where, literally. The only things around are fields that were at that moment full of sheep. We were allowed about an hour here and were given another audio guide explaining the history and building of Stonehenge. Amanda and I mostly spent our time taking pictures (we were kind of tired of audio guides already). It was really cold in the open field, but being there and seeing the stones first hand was pretty amazing. After looking at the rocks and deciding there wasn’t much else to do we left for Bath to see none other than….baths!
The town of Bath was about an hour away and we slept the whole way on the bus! Once we arrived in Bath the sun was already beginning to set, but we could see that our previous ideas of a small town were completely wrong. Bath is pretty large and I’m sure that stems from the healing waters found in the city. People have been going to the baths for centuries and we had the opportunity to go see
Windsor Christmas
a tree in the town of Windsor the Roman baths that are located there. Most of the original foundations had been preserved by the museum built over the top of the foundations. While we were there we were able to learn about where the waters came from and what it was used for…we even got to try some for ourselves! After finishing in the museum and at the Roman Baths, Amanda and I had a chance to walk the high street and also had a chance to view the dams along the river. We left Bath with our group around 6pm and headed back to London where we located our hostel, found some food, and called it a night! Stay tuned for our London adventures!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.317s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 16; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0372s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb