La Familia Brown: Windsor, Bath and Stonehenge

This was probably our busiest day of all. We crammed in three major tourist attractions in one day. We booked a bus tour that would take us to Windsor (where the queen has her preffered weekend/vacation palace), Bath (site of ancient Roman baths) and Stonehenge (you know, the big rocks). Anyway, it turns out that cramming three major sites in to one day leads to a whole lot of rushing around and stressing over missing the bus. And yes, our tour guide did leave FOUR people behind when they were late getting back to the bus!

A special note about our tour guide: She was cray-cray! She told all sorts of random stories, did bad impersonations of Queen Elizabeth II and had a bright pink umbrella that she called the pink pussycat that we had to follow around. She also took to calling us her little pussycats. Anyway, I guess it takes a "certain type" to be a tour guide!

Windsor Castle was beautiful! No wonder it's the queen's favorite place. I wouldn't mind spending my weekends there either. Of all the castles I've seen so far, and there are a lot in Great Brittain, Windsor has been my absolute favorite! Unfortunately, we only had about an hour to spend there so we didn't get to explore nearly as much as we wanted to. We did get to see the changing of the guard that they do there and a lot of the artwork that is on display there. The nice thing is that they stamped our entry ticket and it becomes sort of like a season pass, so we can go back to Windsor as many times as we'd like for 12 months. We'll definitely be back to finish what we started!

Next was Bath, which was about a 2 hour drive. I really knew nothing about the history of this beautiful town, so I found the whole experience fascinating. The town was founded around some natural hot springs that formed there. The legend goes that there was a handsome young prince who was banished from his city because he became infected with Leprosy. He was reduced to being a pig herder, and one day while out, his pigs all jumped into this stinky pool of water and would NOT come out. When he finally got the pigs to come out, he noticed that their sores (apparently pigs get Leprosy too) were starting to heal. He decided to go in to the pool himself and that's when he realized that the water was hot! The pool cured his Leprosy, he went back to his town, word spread about the hot springs, etc...etc...

It was when the Romans came to England that they turned it into what was essentially a day spa, and also a shrine to the Goddess Minerva. What we visited was the ruins of the Roman baths. They're amazing! And of course, the hot spring is still running with hot water filling the bath. Unfortunately, we couldn't go in or touch the water since there's lead in the water. I was real tempted to touch it though!

Finally, we drove about another hour to get to Stonehenge. I was pretty excited to see it and I must say, it was a bit of a letdown. They really are just piles of rocks. I mean, it is pretty interesting to look at them and wonder how in the heck these ancient people got them up there like that. But yeah...they're just really big rocks out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe if you could walk through them and touch them it would be better, but I wasn't all that impressed. Apparently you USED to be able to touch them, but not anymore. Although according to our crazy tour guide, they're changing it back soon so that you can go through them. We just missed out. Oh well!