Day Three - Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge

Our next three days in England were spent on Grayline tours so we could see as much as possible, and boy was it worth the added expense! I highly recommend doing tours (full daytrips) because you don't lose time trying to figure out how to get here or there, and along the way, you get to hear all about the places you're passing. Especially in England, there is a lot to see and learn when going between one place and another - things you'd miss if you were just on your own.

We started out this first day at Windsor Castle (about an hour outside of London), the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world - built over 900 years ago. Many places like this made me realize just how young the United States is. For example, the White House is a meesly 216 years old.

Queen Elizabeth spends her weekends at Windsor Castle, and her weekdays at Buckingham Palace. We were at Windsor Castle on a Saturday, so her flag was raised, indicating that she was there at the same time we were. Pretty cool . . . I bet she was thrilled to hear The Man and I were "in the house." :) Here are a few photos of Windsor Castle:

Above: The oldest part of Windsor Castle - originally built as a fortress. See the Queen's flag flying on top of the tower?

The right corner here is where the Queen's private apartments are. No, we didn't get to tour those, of course, because she was there (Excuse us for interrupting your bath, Your Majesty . . . ") During a couple months in the summer, though, when she's living in Scotland, I've heard that you CAN tour her private apartments.

This next photo is of a very pretty corner of landscape below the fortress tower that I liked :)

I cheated and got this last photo from a website, so you could see how huge Windsor Castle is:

Breathtaking :)

Windsor Castle doesn't allow pictures of the interior, but it's as beautiful as one would guess. It wasn't too over the top, though, which was nice to see. I would even call the decorating outdated, but in a historical place like this, that's sort of the point! Much of the woodwork and ceiling frescos were still original from the Baroque period (1700's), so that was cool to see.

The next stop on our tour was the city of Bath, and you Jane Austen fans out there should already know a little about it. Bath is about a two hour drive from London, so I had no idea why so many wealthy families in Georgian, Regency, and Victorian London would pack up their carriages and head there for so much of their year . . . not until I got there, at least :) It's a really, really pretty place. It's a lot like a modern city, actually, where the city itself in sort of central, then the homes are built on the vast hills overlooking the city. I didn't see that anywhere else in England, but I'm sure there are other places like this as well. Bath sits on a river, and feels much like a little haven. Only it wasn't as little as I expected it to be, that's for sure. The current population is still quite large there, but Bath seems to maintain its small town feel.

Above: It was a hazy/rainy day, so the picture isn't clear - but those hills are filled with stone homes from 100's of years past. It was once the equvilant to what The Hamptons are to rich East Coast American families :)

Where does "Bath" get its name, you ask? From the ancient Roman baths (a spa to die for) which you can still visit today - the springs are just as active as always, and the water is so warm that steam rises from it. Here are a few photos:

The Man stripped off his shirt, but they wouldn't let him jump in! Bummer!

We then traveled for another hour and a half to see Stonehenge - the mysterious formation of 40 ton rocks arranged for who-knows-what-reason 5000 years ago! Any guesses?? The theories range from religious to alien, and everything in between.

Every so often, Stonehenge has an amazing crop circle appear in the vast field it sits in. So just for fun, here's a photo of one of the most famous ones (from online, not my camera!):