Bath & Stonehenge...

Well, as many of you may have known, I made my first weekend trip out of Wolverhampton this weekend to Bath and Stonehenge. Overall it was a very successful trip and a much needed get away, but it defiantly had its fair share of interesting moments.

On Saturday morning we began our journey by trekking to the bus station on through the wet, sloppy, snow covered streets of Wolverhampton. It is really remarkable how they can get a considerable snowfall and not even touch the roads or sidewalks. You can go to the store and buy a £5 sled, but not a show shovel within a hundred miles! Anyways, the bus was on time (except a short delay in Birmingham) and we made it to Bath without a problem. Our first mission was to find the hostel and dump our bags. When we arrived at the hostel it was a little confusing where to check in, seeing that the open door was to the PACKED bar down stairs, till we finally saw the sign "check in at the bar". It was the second round of the rugby tournament, and to our welcome was a bar FULL of people watching the game, which we had to fight through to get checked in. Once we got checked, we found our 12 person dorm room and dumped our stuff to go get some food and check out the town. At this point it was raining a considerable amount, which we have not experienced since being in England! We all were all little road weary and very hungry, so we found the best thing to easy our minds...Pizza Hut! I have been making a conscious effort to avoid any American fast food, because I knew there would come a time when it would just sound soooooo good to have something familiar, that time was now! We took our time eating and drying off before we continued to wander the streets, which we lasted only an hour or two before we were ready to stay inside. We made our way to the pub below our hostel relaxed for a bit then retired upstairs to watch a couple of movies and hit the sack. I must say though that living in a hostel made my small and crappy room here feel like a mansion! If it were not for my iPod (which saved my sanity on more than on occasion this weekend), I am not sure I would have slept at all, but I guess it is all part of the experience (at least that is what I keep telling my self!).

On Sunday we began the day about 9am with a free continental breakfast (ie. toast, cereal, tea and something they called coffee) and headed off to see the sights...in the rain. We started our day off with a tour of the Roman Baths (pretty creative in naming towns) which are spas built by the Romans around natural hot springs located in the town. It was really unbelievable to see how huge the complex was and the importance of these springs to people of Bath throughout history. The complex is filled with the artifacts found in the baths and pieces of the original structure. What amazed me the most was that during Roman times the floors were heated! The floor was raised so the springs could flow under them, they said that it would get so warm that could not walk bare foot on them! We also got to taste the water, which is supposed to bring good health, but it tasted like crap and Sarah ended up sick all weekend with a cold, so it is debatable how "good" it really is. After the baths, we wandered the streets and got some lunch for a bit before our next tour. After lunch we met up with Mad Maxx Tours, which does tours around the area and to Stonehenge. Bath is not the closest town to the rocks, but it is about only one worth making a weekend out of. We choose a half day tour which took us first to Lacock. I am still not completely sure why they brought us to this town, but it was cute none the less. It was a very very small town in the rolling hills of the English country side known as the Cotswolds famous for woolen goods. Once we took some pictures and wandered around a bit then continued on to Stonehenge. After about a 40 minutes drive through the country side we arrived to the rocks. Let me first say that I was expecting something much similar to the excitement of Plymouth Rock, which is nothing more than a large pebble, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the size of it. It is situated in the middle of a field with nothing more than a tourist center, a major highway and a flock of sheep around it. Like everything in England it was not free to walk (about 35 feet) around it and receive a free audio tour that I managed to listen to for no more than 2 minutes. I must say though it is quiet unbelievable that this was built before the invention of the wheel in England and many of the stones were brought from hundreds of miles away! Once we took pictures from about every angle and stone we made our way to the gift shop to thaw out, which turned out to be quite comical. You can by almost anything with a picture, model or name of Stonehenge on it! Once we circled the gift shop a couple hundred times we made our way back to the bus and back to Bath. That night we dinner in pub down stairs and wandered the streets for a bit, till we retired to watching a movie and going to bed.

Monday was our last day in Bath and was reserved for seeing some sites and doing some shopping. We got up early to eat before we had to check-out and catch a free walking tour of the city by 10:30. The tour lasted about 2 hours took us past many of the popular sites that we had not seen and gave us some of the interesting history of Bath. Once our tour finished we made our way to the Bath Abbey which is in the center of the city and where most believe the first King of England was crowned! We got in for free, because the man collecting "donations" felt bad for us poor college students and we wandered the church for awhile. After the brief tour of the abbey we grabbed some lunch at Burger King (yes, two American fast-food joints in one weekend!) and hit up some of the shops which turned out to be much to expensive for our taste! By 3:00 we were completely bored and very tired, so we grabbed some pre-made sandwiches from the supermarket for later and headed to the bus station to catch and early bus back to Bristol (which has a brand new station) to wait for our bus back to Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Once the bus finally arrived and loaded at Bristol, about 30 minutes late, the 2.5 hour bus ride from hell began! Lets just go through the list:
- switching seats with a couple with a baby
- kids screaming and jumping over the seats
- a group of people (who made the bus late to begin with) yelling across the bus at each other
- after be so nice to switch seats, the drunk Scottish ex-con woke up and talked the whole way (even with headphones on!)
- 20 min smoke break after being on the road only an hour
- not getting to Birmingham to catch another bus till 10:30pm
But, we finally made it home safe and sound to our beds which could never have looked sooooo good!

Overall, I could not have been happier with our trip, but such as many things here and in life, it was a true learning experience! I am going to be doing this a lot more in the next few months, so I might as well get use to it now and learn to enjoy it! It is all part of this once in a life time experience! Thank you for taking the time to read all this, I know it was long, but it was a long weekend! Please check out my pictures. They do not all have titles yet, because I took almost 200 pictures this weekend and it is very time consuming to label them all, but enjoy! Happy Valentines Day!!!

Cheers,
Justin