Days 13 and 14
The past two days have not been very eventful, mostly full of traveling from place to place, and this time with no mishaps.=P
Yesterday (wow...it feels so long ago) we went on a tour to Stonehenge, Avebury, Lacock, and Castle Combe. Stonehenge was not as imposing as I thought it would be, but still quite impressive. Apparently a third of the stones have sunk into the ground, otherwise I might have been much more impressed. It is amazing to think, however, that these stones have been here for 5000 years and that it was a familiar sight to generation after generation of people. And those rocks are really REALLY heavy. I can't even imagine the amount of work it would have taken to drag them all to this site and then to heave them upright and balance other heavy stones on top. Apparently no one is really sure how they did it. Oh, the people responsible for it are called the Beaker People, which I found kind of amusing. Apparently they're called the Beaker People for their pottery. The guide of the tour we took kept on joking that the purpose of the Stonehenge was really for a UFO landing site because the engines are hot after spaceflight and they need somewhere to rest until they cool off. As the big UFO sits on the Stonehenge, a lot of little ones fly out to make crop circles. Then for the crop circles that we saw, he'd comment on the size of the UFO necessary to make it. He was a funny tour guide. Avebury is sort of like Stonehenge, but the circle is larger, more well defined, and is made of smaller rocks. I actually liked Avebury better because you could just walk wherever you wanted among the stones, and the scenery from there is a lot prettier. Also, it's just part of a village, and there are fewer tourists to contend with. They also have a lot of sheep there. Surprisingly, sheep sound to me like people pretending to be sheep, and not really like I thought sheep would sound like at all. They have a deeper voice than I had previously imagined. Lacock was where we had lunch at a pub called the Georgian which has had a license to sell beer since the 1360s!! And the same ruling family has been there for 300 years! That ruling family has been ruling for longer than the US has been in existence. That's such a long time. And that pub is so old, and it's still there. Oh, but there's a gambling machine in the corner which kept on flashing lights which then reflected in the mirror. It's really amazing how smoothly history, the present, and even prehistory coexist in these places. I had roast beef with Yorkshire pudding (which is egg, but really reminds me of fried puffy tofu). The sauce was yummy. After Lacock we went to Castle Combe, which has been titled the most beautiful village in England, and I could definately see why. Speaking of old things, it hasn't changed in 400 years. If I lived there, I'd be so afraid of changing anything. I'd be tiptoing all over the place for fear of disturbing the cobblestones. There are the sweetest little cottages with gardens in full bloom right now. A little brook sort flows through one end of the village. The village itself it tiny, consisting of exactly one street. We were lucky and managed not to get lost.^^ There is also an Italian manor with an Italian garden in the back which has been converted into a hotel. The rooms, it seems, are basically little cottages as well, with the manor serving as a lobby area, restaurant, and entertainment center.
There are a few things I'd like to add about Bath before leaving the subject. It's amazingly uniform. All the buildings are made out of the same rock which was initially white but has all aged, pretty much uniformly, to a kind of off white honey color. Some buildings have an interesting effect where dirt has accumulated on a very three dimensional surface so that it looks like a two dimensional drawing of a 3D surface. There are lots of flowers in window boxes and hanging baskets and such, but they're pretty much all the same as well. The curtains also are almost uniformly white, lace, or slightly off white. I think if I ever lived there I'd have a burning urge to put differently colored curtains in each window and grow cacti in the windowboxes. Maybe I'd dress the cacti too. Or give them sunglasses, umbrellas and a tiny pineapples with ministraws sticking out of them to hold onto.
After the tour, we walked back up to the hostel to collect our luggage and headed back down (on the bus this time) to catch a train to London. In London we stayed in a hostel for a night before catching a series of trains which took us to Utrecht, so here we are in Holland. For dinner we went to a Greek place and had dinner right by the canal. The canal water is not very clean, so I took great care to not fall in. As we ate, a lot of boats went by...canoes, small motorboats, and a even a kayak. It was a very pleasant dinner.
Yesterday (wow...it feels so long ago) we went on a tour to Stonehenge, Avebury, Lacock, and Castle Combe. Stonehenge was not as imposing as I thought it would be, but still quite impressive. Apparently a third of the stones have sunk into the ground, otherwise I might have been much more impressed. It is amazing to think, however, that these stones have been here for 5000 years and that it was a familiar sight to generation after generation of people. And those rocks are really REALLY heavy. I can't even imagine the amount of work it would have taken to drag them all to this site and then to heave them upright and balance other heavy stones on top. Apparently no one is really sure how they did it. Oh, the people responsible for it are called the Beaker People, which I found kind of amusing. Apparently they're called the Beaker People for their pottery. The guide of the tour we took kept on joking that the purpose of the Stonehenge was really for a UFO landing site because the engines are hot after spaceflight and they need somewhere to rest until they cool off. As the big UFO sits on the Stonehenge, a lot of little ones fly out to make crop circles. Then for the crop circles that we saw, he'd comment on the size of the UFO necessary to make it. He was a funny tour guide. Avebury is sort of like Stonehenge, but the circle is larger, more well defined, and is made of smaller rocks. I actually liked Avebury better because you could just walk wherever you wanted among the stones, and the scenery from there is a lot prettier. Also, it's just part of a village, and there are fewer tourists to contend with. They also have a lot of sheep there. Surprisingly, sheep sound to me like people pretending to be sheep, and not really like I thought sheep would sound like at all. They have a deeper voice than I had previously imagined. Lacock was where we had lunch at a pub called the Georgian which has had a license to sell beer since the 1360s!! And the same ruling family has been there for 300 years! That ruling family has been ruling for longer than the US has been in existence. That's such a long time. And that pub is so old, and it's still there. Oh, but there's a gambling machine in the corner which kept on flashing lights which then reflected in the mirror. It's really amazing how smoothly history, the present, and even prehistory coexist in these places. I had roast beef with Yorkshire pudding (which is egg, but really reminds me of fried puffy tofu). The sauce was yummy. After Lacock we went to Castle Combe, which has been titled the most beautiful village in England, and I could definately see why. Speaking of old things, it hasn't changed in 400 years. If I lived there, I'd be so afraid of changing anything. I'd be tiptoing all over the place for fear of disturbing the cobblestones. There are the sweetest little cottages with gardens in full bloom right now. A little brook sort flows through one end of the village. The village itself it tiny, consisting of exactly one street. We were lucky and managed not to get lost.^^ There is also an Italian manor with an Italian garden in the back which has been converted into a hotel. The rooms, it seems, are basically little cottages as well, with the manor serving as a lobby area, restaurant, and entertainment center.
There are a few things I'd like to add about Bath before leaving the subject. It's amazingly uniform. All the buildings are made out of the same rock which was initially white but has all aged, pretty much uniformly, to a kind of off white honey color. Some buildings have an interesting effect where dirt has accumulated on a very three dimensional surface so that it looks like a two dimensional drawing of a 3D surface. There are lots of flowers in window boxes and hanging baskets and such, but they're pretty much all the same as well. The curtains also are almost uniformly white, lace, or slightly off white. I think if I ever lived there I'd have a burning urge to put differently colored curtains in each window and grow cacti in the windowboxes. Maybe I'd dress the cacti too. Or give them sunglasses, umbrellas and a tiny pineapples with ministraws sticking out of them to hold onto.
After the tour, we walked back up to the hostel to collect our luggage and headed back down (on the bus this time) to catch a train to London. In London we stayed in a hostel for a night before catching a series of trains which took us to Utrecht, so here we are in Holland. For dinner we went to a Greek place and had dinner right by the canal. The canal water is not very clean, so I took great care to not fall in. As we ate, a lot of boats went by...canoes, small motorboats, and a even a kayak. It was a very pleasant dinner.
posted by teabag | 2:54 PM
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