Wednesday: Stonehenge, Stourhead, and Bath

Okay, wow. Can you just say most beautiful countryside ever? Because I can. We hopped on our bus at 8am, and took off for Stonehenge. We arrived at about 10:30, and only had about 10 minutes by the stones before we had to be back on the bus. But really that's all you needed. We made one lap around and took tons of pictures and were good. :) I had been told that the stones were roped off now, and that it wasn't really as cool because you had to stay away, so I was expecting to only get within maybe 50 feet of the stones. Nope. The closest rope was 5 feet away on one of the sides. The others were a more respectable 50 feet, but really you got both the close up and far away feel. Like a lot of famous things, the henge was smaller than I expected. But at the same time, still impressive. Basically, I didn't think I cared that much about Stonehenge until I got there and then I was crazy excited to be there.

Then we headed for Stourhead gardens, which reminded me a lot of Thanksgiving Point gardens, except much more natural terrain. It was, yet again, BEAUTIFUL, and I took lots and lots of pictures. In the gardens is the Temple of Apollo, where the proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice is filmed. It was fun to be there, but it was more fun when we watched it later tonight and were able to say I stood there TODAY! In any case, it was gorgeous.

Then we headed for Bath. We arrived about an hour before our free time so we wandered the streets, which were very pretty, but it was also rather chilly so we spent most our time in the shops in the city centre. We then toured the Roman Baths, which were cool, but I liked the ones at the Cluny Museum better because the roof was intact. We also got to drink the legendary Bath water, which was warm and tasted like dirt. So that was great. :P We also went through Bath Abbey, which I thought was very pretty, but Annie and Kyle told me it was too light and they preferred the darker abbeys like Westminster.

The outside of Bath Abbey

The inside of Bath Abbey :)

Streets and Clouds

Supposedly this is the fountain from Les Mis where Javert clearly did not read the signs very well

Unfortunately for me the Pump Room was closed by the time we finished our Bath Tour :(

Annie was not a fan of the water

Cute bike in foreground, Cool chapel in background

After bath we drove the two hours home and started right in on Pride and prejudice, which some of the girls had never seen. A perfect end to a perfect day. :)