Tag Archives: Stonehenge

Moments of the Month

Now that it’s the last week (and almost the last day) of my abroad trip, I wanted to recap my top four favorite moments from the past month (one from every week).

Week 1: The London Eye (or the view from it)

The most beautiful view of Big Ben from the London Eye

View of Big Ben/House of Parliament from the London Eye

Although the London Eye itself was not my favorite part about this first week, it did serve as a reality check that I was officially in London. Riding the Eye and seeing all around London was beautiful and disorienting – I didn’t think it would be possible to experience all of the city sights in such a short period of time.

Week Two: Stonehenge Day Trip

Stonehenge

Standing at the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey

This day trip was easily the longest day out of the month – yet entirely worth every tiring second of it. I loved not only learning a lot about Stonehenge, Glastonbury, and Avebury from our guides, but also visiting each place and seeing the famous circles of stones and abbey ruins. It still amazes me that so little is known about places like Stonehenge, even though they are SO ancient and frequently studied. I also included Glastonbury Abbey in particular because the ruins of this church were absolutely ornate and beautiful, even in their crumbling state.

Week Three: Tower of London

The Queen (and the monarchs before her) sure do have great taste in jewelry, though sadly we weren’t allowed to take any pictures of the Crown Jewels. Even so, seeing the Tower Bridge, meeting an authentic Beefeater, and touring the Tower of London was definitely another wonderful full day adventure. In addition to seeing the Crown Jewels (twice), we saw the ravens that legend states that if they were to leave the Tower of London the kingdom and tower would fall. We also were lucky enough to stumble on a type of inspection similar to the Changing the Guard ceremony, although with less pomp and circumstance.

: Me, standing with a guard of the Crown Jewels

Beefeater giving us a tour of the Tower of London

Week Four: Paris

Without a doubt my weekend in Paris has (so far) been my favorite part about this week. Click here to read my last blog post on why I loved Paris so much!

The Eiffel Tower on my last night in Paris

Stay tuned for my final week thoughts and reflections on my London trip in my upcoming blog posts! Cheers, love!

Location: London, England

The Long Haul to The Henge

Among the myriad of group trips and dinners we went on, the biggest one was probably the trip we took to Bath, hitting up Stonehenge on the way there, a trip which took pretty much the entire day.

It’s a really long drive away from London, but we took a bus all the way there. It’s really worth going, but I can’t say if it’s worth you driving all the way there and back, because I didn’t drive myself. A bunch of us fell asleep on the trip, so really, you should really find a convenient way to go that doesn’t involve you driving yourself in my opinion. Especially if you’re not used to driving on the left side of the road.

I had been to Stonehenge before, but they renovated the site a lot, for instance there was a lot more room to stand on the northern side, which was basically a little grassy area rather than a cramped ditch.

But as for Stonehenge itself, it’s in an area of England that’s very far away from everything, as such, besides the nearby highway and some towns a mile away, it’s really peaceful, quiet, and very windy. It’s surrounded by farm and grassland nearly everywhere, with trees nowhere to be seen.

Stonehenge is really impressive, though. These really are amazing to see, knowing that a hundred or so people somehow managed to bring all these stones that weigh as much as an elephant each to this point, but whatever purpose it served besides a calendar is a mystery.

Oh yeah, the sun shines through it on the solstice, and if you go on any of those days, you’re likely to see some Druids standing there having a religious ceremony. As the audio guide says, when people discovered how old Stonehenge was, people immediately thought the oldest-living group in Britain, the Druids, had something to do with it. Later they discovered it couldn’t have been built by the Druids, as it was even older than their society, but by that time the Druids had already jumped to the conclusion with everyone else, and now they use Stonehenge as a religious site.

You can’t go up to the stones, though, unfortunately. The audio guide explained that there’s space under the site, and the ground would shift and change if millions of people came and walked into Stonehenge every year.

But still, I couldn’t recommend going any more. Getting out of the cramped city and seeing forests and grassy fields for a change was a very good feeling, and it feels very peaceful up at Stonehenge.

Next, we continue onto Bath!

Location: London, United Kingdom

“A mini break means true love.” -BJD

I’ve begun to realize that my time abroad is coming to an end although it’s been so long since I’ve had a class that just seems wrong. In other things that seem wrong, the days off the UK gives for just about anything, (although I’m not in any place to complain as my only work is studying).

Last weekend we had off Good Friday and Easter Monday. I understand Friday, but I’m convinced Easter Monday is just a made-up thing. This past weekend the nation was given off Friday for the Royal Wedding. That one is a stretch, but I understood after millions of people flocked into the city, basically shutting down massive areas of London. What I do not understand is getting off the following Monday to continue the celebrations. But it did mean that I got to spend another weekend as The Three Best Friends That Anyone Could Have. By which I mean myself, Matt and Mo. We went to Devon Friday afternoon to stay with Matt’s sister Bec, his brother Rob, and his favorite 4-legged family member Diesel.

After getting in, we quickly changed into dress-up clothes and went to some sort of charity/opening/royal party event, complete with harpists and several piece orchestras and heralds that gave us royal titles. I became Claire Princess of Pennsylvania; I’ll allow you all the opportunity to bow down to me later. We had a wonderful time and closed several lounges before making a late return to Bec’s.

We spent the next morning lying on the beach and recovering, and Momo and I swam in the ocean, regardless of the freezing water without wet suits like everyone else. Several people commented on our ‘braveness’ which I take is BritCode for stupidity, and assured of after Momo had turned gray.

After the beach everyone was ready to have a barbecue, only to realize that there was no grill. While this would have ended all of my hopes of eating except possibly microwaved porridge, the Smiths were genius enough to put together a grill by playing the game ‘grill made out of things in the shed’. As Momo pointed out, the Smith family and anyone connected to them are capable of making anything, only to point out that we were clearly the exception.

The next afternoon we went to the village Clovelly, which was on at least a 45 degree angle to the water’s edge. I tried my first real Cornish pasty, and have since developed a taste for potato, cheese and onion filled pastry. Afterwards, two of the Bec’s friends from Wolverhampton came with their one-year-old son, who seemed incapable of being unhappy. We went out for Cream Tea (which is actually tea and scones with cream), although for the second time in a week Momo and I committed a faux pas and drank coffee instead of tea at tea time. I learned to differentiate ‘going for tea’ and ‘having tea’… No, wait, no I didn’t. Only that one means dinner and the other means proper tea.

The next morning while Momo and I were making ourselves breakfast we heard the unmistakable sounds of a certain soundtrack coming from the living room only to find that Rob was kind enough to put on Stardust (obligatory mention), as we had talked about it non-stop since the mini-orchestra had played the theme, and we’d insisted on reenacting the gatekeeper scene at every stone wall. We then went back to the beach to teach Harry to like sand and picnics before packing up and heading back to London. Our way back was lousy with traffic, and what had been a three-hour ride down was nearly doubled on the way back. The pluses were our impromptu dance party on the side of the motorway and a slow-moving view of Stonehenge, which I can now cross off my list!

Location: Devon, Cornwall, Clovelly, Stonehenge

“Time flies” is an understatement.

Well, if I didn’t feel like I was actually going to school before, I do now! I’ve been slammed with coursework and exam preparations for about 2 weeks. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if study abroad meant traveling as much as you can and then writing a paper on each place about your experiences? If only life were so amazing. Regardless of the intense studying (I should be doing), I’ve traveled a TON lately – which would be the reason I haven’t blogged in almost a month.

So the Saturday after my last blog, I took a trip to Stonehenge. I traveled with one of my friends from the dorms; it was nice having only one other person to travel with. Naturally, a coach to Salisbury was the traveling method of choice. There are no coaches that go directly to Stonehenge, so we took a coach to Salisbury, the surrounding town. We later found out that the reason there aren’t any buses directly to Stonehenge is because they’re stones in the middle of nowhere! The weather was beautiful; it was sunny and mild when we got there. It was around 10:30am at this point, and we hadn’t slept much so we decided to find a caf� nearby. We walked around the corner from the bus station and saw that there was a market in the city centre and a really cute little caf�/restaurant on the corner called Nuggs. They had the history of the building posted around the restaurant; apparently, Nugg was the last name of the family who owned the property and the building was built in the 13^th century! The floorboards have been replaced and it’s been restored to some extent so that it’s safe to occupy; however, there was definitely a historic atmosphere about the place.

When we were done, we went outside to walk around a bit and find the tourist information. We walked through a part of the market and then into an “Olde Sweet Shoppee”.

After that, we found the tourist information shop and went inside to buy a ticket to get to Stonehenge. We wandered in and out of little shops and walked some streets of Salisbury. There were a lot of locals out and about with their families because of the nice weather, so we really got a feel of local life. When the time came, we got the bus at the station. The way to the stones was really beautiful; we passed pigs, and cows, and sheep!! It was also really interesting to listen to the history of the area and of Stonehenge before getting there.

We arrived at the stones about 30 minutes later. We got our guide and then spent about an hour walking around the stones.

There isn’t that big of a circle to walk in but the audio guides had a lot of information so we walked really slowly and kept taking breaks to take pictures.

Listening to the history and the theories of how the stones got there was so much more interesting and captivating with the stones right in front of you. We then went to the field across the way and walked in the grass. We saw ancient burial mounds when we were in the field! On the way back to Salisbury, we went a different way than we had come. The streets are so narrow and the bus was going so fast I thought we were going to die! When we got back to town and my feet were firmly on the ground, we realized that it had gotten cloudy and cooler. Good old English weather! Parts of the market were getting ready to close, so we walked through the whole of the market. After the market, we journeyed over to the Cathedral to get a quick look at it before getting some dinner. The architecture was gorgeous – I love the Gothic style!!

Going back to London, the bus smelled pretty awful, but I guess that’s one of the risks you take when you decide to travel by coach. When we got back to London, the bus driver didn’t know where he was going at all; he took a wrong turn but finally found the station. When we stopped, I stood right up because I wanted to get home. The woman sitting in the front just gave me a nasty look and said something to me. I was so confused so I just looked at her and walked past. I left the station with Mary and we walked quickly to the corner to catch the bus. We glanced across the street to the left and saw the bus we take to the dorms was sitting at the bus stop. We looked at each other and RAN across the street without looking and just made it on the bus in time. It was quite the interesting end to our day but a successful day nonetheless!

**More blogs will be posted within the next few days hopefully. I have two essay exams on Monday and Tuesday so if the blogs are late, that’s why! 🙂

Location: Salisbury, England

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