So as I anticipated, I'm a little crap at updating this in a timely manner. So now I'm stuck once again trying to recount a week's worth of adventures. So I guess I'll just start with last weekend and hope I can remember the main points.
Saturday started off pretty early. We took the bus into town, caught a train heading to London Gatwick Airport, where we had to change trains for one that went from Gatwick to Brighton. In total it was probably around 3 hours of train riding chopped in half by a long wait for the ISA London students to arrive at the Brighton station.
While we waited everyone got pretty hungry so we decided to try out the British Doritios, which all had bizarre names. Turns out Cool Ranch is just the Original flavor here. Anyway the ISA London folks eventually showed up and we finally got to see Brighton.
The weather first of all was amazing; sunny, upper 60s to low 70s. Basically the perfect day to see the coast. We walked through town until we reached the Royal Pavilion, which had been used as a palace for one of the Kings.. I think it was George but I honestly can't remember. The outside of it was amazing; it had a very Middle Eastern architectural style. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures inside on the tour. They had the entire palace decorated as it would have looked at the time when it was used, in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It was insanely lavish and extremely beautiful. They gave us a free audio tour which led us through the main entry way, dining hall, kitchen, sitting rooms, music room, and bedrooms.
After the tour we walked down to the pier where we were finally given some free time. Nathan and I walked to the end and bought some Indian food and then walked back to the beach which was entirely made up of large pebbles. We were only given about an hour of free time and then it was time to walk back to the train station. Thank goodness the train situation went off without a hitch this time and we all had seats back to Reading, where we grabbed the bus and came home.
The next day was another early day. This time it was so early the busses weren't even running yet. We didn't know this at the time and walked all the way to the bus stop before realizing we needed to walk to the train station across town. It took around 30 minutes and luckily we made it in just enough time to catch our train to Bath.
Bath was a gorgeous town, so far it's been my favorite. The architecture was absolutely stunning and it's the site of the most expansive Roman Bath House built in the UK. When we got into Bath we sorted out the Stonehenge tour bus situation and then grabbed lunch at another little pizza place. This time they at least gave us steak knives to cut it with. After lunch Nathan, Breezy and I went on the tour of the Roman Baths. This has definitely been one of the highlights of my trip so far. After taking my Roman History class last semester it was amazing to get to see some of the things I learned about and see statues of the leaders that I learned about.
The Bath tour took a little over an hour, again with a free audio guided tour that gave a ton of really amazing historical background and facts as well as explanations of what things were and how things would have looked then. Unfortunately you can't go in the baths, as they used lead pipes to bring in the water and they lined the bottom of the pools with sheets of lead to prevent groundwater from leaking in and cooling the water. However they did let us touch it as long as we washed our hands before eating or touching anything. It was incredibly hot, a bit hotter than the average hot tub. After the tour we visited the shop and each entry ticket came with a free sample of the drinking water, which tasted awful.
After the Bath tour we had to run and catch the bus to Stonehenge where everyone else was meeting us. The bus driver was also our guide and he was really great. The countryside around Bath was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately a large part of it is used/owned by the military. There were tank crossings along the way haha.
Stonehenge was pretty awesome but a little disappointing at the same time. It was simultaneously larger and smaller than I thought. Not sure how that works but yeah haha. You also had to stay on a little path that at some points got very very far away from the actual stones. It would have been a lot cooler to have been alive and there when you were still allowed to walk between the stones and get a closer look. We couldn't even see the stones in the inner rings at all really.
After the tour we got some ice cream and then it was back on the bus. When we got back to Bath we took a different route back to the train station to see a bit more of the architecture. By then it was already getting fairly late so a group of us opted to head back straight away.
When we got back to Reading we grabbed some Subway in the train station because we were starving. Everyone over here orders the 6 inch instead of the footlong and you can buy cheesy bread as well as just a bowl of meatballs. Pretty awesome haha. Then we discovered the bus wouldn't be arriving for another hour and a few of us caught a cab back to the dorm. And that concludes the weekend of insane traveling.
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