Less than a week to go...

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Hello Everyone, thought we would update again. Let us see... when was the last update... way back in Scotland. Edinburgh was fine, we stayed a bit out of town, but the place we stayed was pretty good except the room was WAY too hot. we took another one of the new europe tours which was informative, but our tour guide spoke to us as if she was telling a story to a group of young children, which was very annoying. we wandered around a bit , but there is not much to report. we did see the place where J.K. Rowling wrote most of the first Harry Potter book, and also some of the landmark that inspired her (at least so claims our tour guide).

Our next stop was in Newcastle (Yay England!) in order to see Hadrian's wall. For those who have no idea what this is, it was the wall built by the romans (in 112 AD) to protect their land in england from the marauding barbarians in the north. it stretched all the way across england from east to west with forts and other protective towers all along its length. We took the bus along it, and it was pouring down rain the entire day (we had to hit the rain sometime right?). We stopped at the Bridoswald fort and the Vidolanda archaeological site. They are both very cool.

Next we went on to Birmingham in order to day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick Castle. In Stratford we saw the house in which William Shakespeare was born and raised. We also saw his final resting place in Holy Trinity Church. They were interesting but the house was way too expensive. The following Day we went to Warwick Castle, which is awesome even in the pouring down rain. They had a fully functioning trebuchet (a catapult like device) there which we had the opportunity to see in action. It launched a 33 lbs ball well over 200 meters (660 ft), it was quite impressive to see.

Our next stop was Salisbury, but we had a quick stop over in Oxford in order to see the college a little bit. We only went to Christ College because it had the things we most wanted to see. There are stained glass windows in the dining hall which depict characters from 'Alice in Wonderland' and some of the scenes from the 'Harry Potter' movies were filmed there. It was interesting, but we weren't there very long.

In Salisbury we took a day to go to Stonehenge and Avebury (an older monolithic site). Avebury was cool, but Stonehenge was good because we got a lot of information both on the tour bus out there and back and on the audio guide at the site. We really enjoyed Stonehenge. Later, we took a train into London. We are now in London until we return to the States on the 12th. We are staying with a friend, Jane, which is really nice because now we get to cook our own food. Yay for not eating out!

Yesterday we went on a tour of the west end of London which was really informative (Yay New Europe Free Tours!) and today we are going on one of the South Bank area (The Globe Theatre, Tower of London, etc). We also decided to go on a pub crawl last night, which was okay. Going out to pubs and night clubs is not really our thing, so we left early and were in bed by 11:30 (we know, we are old people). So far, we really like London. The Indian food is really good, Jane took us out our first night in. That is all for now. We have internet access, so we should be able to update at least once before we leave. We cannot believe we have been gone so long, but will be glad to be home.

Love to all!

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