Stonehenge Sunrise

We'd been following the weather reports weeks before we arrived in London. There was rain expected every single day of our stay. We even bought special rain covers for our shoes. We were also prepared with windbreakers and umbrellas.

(By the way, you can click on photos to enlarge them.)

Art woke me at 3:00 thinking it was 4:00 but it was good to have that extra time to get ready. We ate the Pop-Tarts I packed for breakfast along with hotel coffee and left at 5:00. Notice the steps right out the door? There's even a step to stumble over in the room itself. 

It was only about a 5-10 minute walk to the Millennium Hotel meeting spot. I thought we'd be there early but most of the people were already congregated on the sidewalk. The first couple we met were super friendly. It turned out that she was a teacher also... and would you believe from Palatine, Illinois? We would also meet another young fellow who was from Naperville, Illinois who was a swimmer like our son and told us he'd even been to our son's (long ago) high school. Amazing!

It was an hour and 40 minute ride to Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. Our very friendly and knowledgeable guide was Carol.

It was fun to see all the mistletoe on the trees.

Arriving at the Visitors Center in Wiltshire, we saw a village showing what the stone age houses must have looked like and a possible way the stone pillars might have been moved.

And then we were there. The sunrise tour is the only time you're allowed close to the standing stones. 

We were enthralled. 

How did these Neolithic people using primitive tools move these 25-40 ton stones to this location from miles away? We learned that 1/3 of the standing stones are actually underground.

We saw the angle at which the sun at different times of the year would shine through the stones.

Here we are with our guide, Carol.

We saw a crow perched on one of the knobs on the stones. There is a depression under the lintel stone that would fit that knob to hold it all together. (Art says it's called the mortise-and-tenon joint.)

There are also 77 different kinds lichen that grow on these stones, many are very rare.

It was such an awesome feeling to walk among the stones and imagining the people who built them. Why did they build this? And how? It's truly intriguing.

After buying some souvenir t-shirts for our grandsons, we left Stonehenge and the bus took us to Lacock.

A restaurant was shown to us where you could order an English breakfast.

We chose to go to a bakery where Art had a Cornish pasty and I had shortbread with hot chocolate.

There were several other tour members there from Wisconsin and Florida. We all loved getting to know each other and talking about places we'd visited. And no, we did not talk politics at all. 😂

Lacock is considered one of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds.  Scenes from Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice and Downton Abbey had been filmed there.

The next stop was Bath. 

Bath is where much of England's upper crust used to come to "take the waters."  It was the Romans who originally built the baths after they discovered the hot springs.

We'd been here before with our children in 1990. (And yes, back then Art actually drove all over the place.) It was fun to see it again (while someone else did the driving).

After returning to our hotel, we decided to have dinner at the Baba ghanouj Lebanese restaurant a couple blocks away. It reminded us of our favorite Middle Eastern dishes we loved in Illinois.

I had a mixed shawarma plate and Art had a chicken shish. It was wonderful.

And yes, it was a wonderful day.  It wasn't just the places we'd experienced, but also the very happy, friendly people we'd spent a day with.