London, Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath

Greetings! It's 2:42 PM here in Canterbury and 9:42 in Indiana. It's also 48 degrees Fahrenheit here, a welcome change! I've been pretty busy this week, with my English paper due Friday and a smattering of readings to do. I'm writing my paper on the book Camus: Portrait of a Moralist by Stephen Bronner, a very tedious book, so a bout of writer's block brought me here to recap my weekend. I went to London again last weekend for a tour that brought my friends and me to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and the city of Bath. We arrived Thursday night and stayed again in Equity Point, the non-sketchy, non-stabby hostel. The tour began very early Friday morning at a hotel nearby when the Golden Tours bus picked us up. Our first stop was Windsor Castle, which is beautiful. The line to get in was extremely long, so we didn't get much time to look around, but what we saw was lovely. I especially liked the main dining hall, where the Queen entertains guests like Obama when they come calling. As can be imagined, the castle is huge and very elaborately decorated. Everything is all gold and white and shiny. You're not allowed to take pictures, but my friends snuck some, and you have to check them out above. All the rooms are jaw-dropping. But, as always, I was fascinated by the question of cleaning. Who maintains this place? Who dusts the shelves? Framed well, that would make one heck of a good book. The Windsor Maid. Or How I Came to Know Windsor's Secrets. The Queen's old dollhouse is on display, and it is ridiculous beyond belief. It literally, literally has electricity and running water. We also stopped by St. George's Cathedral, which is attached to Windsor. Some queens and kings are buried there, including everyone's Tudor favorite, King Henry VIII. He's buried beneath the marbled tile with one of his wives, Jane Seymour. She's the one he married right after he beheaded Anne Boleyn. She died in childbirth, so I guess it's okay that they're resting together, as opposed to, say, him and Anne. I would have taken more pictures of the outside of Windsor, but we kinda, sorta got kicked out when my friend walked on the grass and set off a security alarm... Awkward.

An hour and a half later, we found ourselves at Stonehenge, which is a very cool place, both literally and metaphorically. It was windy on Friday, as well as chilly, making our 45 minutes there seem long, although the unique vibe of Stonehenge almost makes me wish that we could have just sat around for an hour and stared at it. It's a very calming place, very peaceful, despite its vicinity to the highway and the hordes of tourists who surround it. Maybe it's because of its age, maybe it's because of its history, but Stonehenge is fascinating to me. You might not be able to go up to it, but you definitely get a sense of its size and age by looking at it, and you can appreciate and be awe-struck by the sheer manpower (or alien power, if you're one of those people) that it must have taken to erect this thing. 

Our last stop for the day was Bath, another hour and a half from Stonehenge, on the west of England. Bath, like Stonehenge, has a long history. Romans lived there, and one of Bath's most famous sites is an old Roman bathhouse. The bathhouse is well-preserved because it was discovered somewhat recently, in the 1800s, since it is below contemporary street-level. After its discovery, a museum was built up over it to protect it, but the first "basement" floor remains relatively untouched. We spent most of our time in Bath exploring the remains of the bathhouse. The bathhouse surrounds a natural hot spring pool, the only hot spring in Britain, and you can see steam rising up from the water, as well as bubbles coming up from the earth. You're not allowed to bath in (duh) or even touch the water because it's untreated and open to the elements. So, for instance, if a bird flies by and poops in it, that poop will sit in the water for days and days because there's no way to flush it out. Gross. There's a separate sink, however, that connects to the water source, and you can drink from that. The spring water apparently is really good for you because it contains all these minerals, and lore has it that the water can cure almost anything. Of course, I took a drink, and while I wouldn't call it yummy, it wasn't half-bad. It was tinny, like water from camp. After the bathhouse, we walked around a little bit and got some scones, but then it was time to go. 

When we arrived back in London, all of us really wanted to go to this pub our first tour guide had mentioned, called the Grenadier. He said that it was really, really old and had great food. When we asked our final tour guide, however, for directions to it, she just shook her head and suggested some other places. But we were dead-set on the Grenadier, so, being enterprising, young Americans, we just started walking and figured we'd find it sometime. Well. An hour and ten strangers later, we finally found someone who said he knew where it was. He eventually led us to this super-sketchy alleyway that bore a sign reading, "Posted: Private Property." He pointed down the lane and explained that we had to go down the alleyway and then turn left. Some of us were like, "Abort, abort!" For a split-second, I too thought that we had been led to Jack the Ripper's grandson's house, but I'm glad we went for it because the Grenadier is one of the best restaurants I've ever been to. The atmosphere cannot be beat. It's cozy and little, and the food was fantastic. I had fish and rice, which sounds boring, but, oh, no. As for its history, the Grenadier is older than America. It's something like 350 years old, which is awesome. Its ceiling is covered in money from all different countries and all different eras, and it's fun to try to spot really old American bills. I myself sacrificed a dollar to the cause, in part because I was so thankful that we found the place and didn't die in the process. 

And that pretty much concludes my weekend! We dropped into the British Natural History Museum and Westminster on Saturday for a hot second before heading back to Canterbury, and now I'm here, avoiding my paper. Thank you for reading, and make sure to peep the pictures above!