The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good:

We spent a lovely last day in London touring the English countryside today. We visited three major sites: Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath. They were all wonderful and very interesting.

On our way to Windsor Castle we passed Runnymeade. Most of us wouldn’t know what famous thing happened in Runnymeade (David Ahlstrom might know). Years ago one of the Kings (George, I think) made rules that the barons and lords were having a hard time following. The peasants were rebelling and on protest to the King, he drew up the Magna Carta! It was done in 12 copies and sent out to 12 different places (only 4 originals remain). Much of the law that is now practiced stems from laws and issues in the Magna Carta. So our guide tells us to look left and we see a large grassy field. That’s it--EXCEPT the our American Bar Association felt that this was too important of a place not to have a memorial mentioning it so they raised funds and built a very lovely memorial commemorating the event at Runnymeade!


Windsor Castle was very picturesque—the way you would expect a castle to look. Edward the Confessor built Windsor (he built Tower of London too) exactly one day’s journey from each other. That way if he needed reinforcements they would be there in a day. The Queen and heads of State (or any of the Royals) frequent this castle. We were allowed to go into the State Apartments (the old parts). We toured through an exhibit of a miniature doll house, fully furnished and dolls and wardrobes for the dolls—the stuff that Queens and Princesses play with. We then went through the bedrooms, dining room, drawing room, reception hall, gallery, weapons hall, etc., etc., etc. They had paintings (some famous), walls full of weapons—spears rifles, hand guns, swords, armor (used to show off to others that they were well stocked with weapons)!


They had a Changing of the Guard there also that was much better than the one at Buckingham Palace. You could get right up close and there were no iron walls or gates between them and you. It was still pretty much the same thing—much marching around, a band playing, lots of orders being shouted and the like.

We next drove for a while to Stonehenge. I (Jim) have always been very interested in Stonehenge and was certainly the major reason we went on this tour. Well, we hit a traffic jam, and were delays for quite a while, and by the time we got there, were only given 45 minutes to see Stonehenge. GET OUT OF TOWN!!! I traveled half way around the world and made an extra long “stopover” in London just to see Stonehenge—
and I get 45 minutes? Oh well, I grab my camera and run! We were able to get fairly close to the stones—closer than I thought we would be allowed. It was exactly what you would expect—a bunch of rocks kind of piled up in a circle! The path went all the way around, so you got to examine it from every angle. They say that it has been revised three times, and today much of it is missing (probably in the British Museum!) The original Stonehenge (3000 BC) was just one rock—called the Heel weighed in at 50 tons.. It is still there and it was used to line up the summer solstice. All the other rocks and rings were added in later revisions (2000-1500 BC). It was pretty cool and I took lots of pictures from every angle (I went around twice!).

Another interesting thing was that it’s just sitting right off the freeway. We were driving along and then all of a sudden, there it is on the right. There isn’t much there. Also nearby are lots of burial mounds—said to house one person each (the Beeker people)—the people who built Stonehenge (or at least died there).

Now for the final part of the tour, we’re off to Bath. There’s lots of history there, but we were mostly interested in the Roman baths. It was said that this is one of only three places in England that has natural hot springs. When the Romans were there, they really enjoyed a good bath so they developed it extensively. It was
the early version of a Jacuzzi. The Sacred Springs was the pool where the water originated from—something like a million liters of water a day. They had little channels carved in the stone floors to direct the water from room to room. They had separate rooms for each process of the bathing process. The first room was for your bath before the bath. You were to scrub and even scrape yourself clean, and apply liberal amounts of olive oil (the dirt scrapings were sometimes sold for mud facials if the scrapings came from a famous person or a knight! Gross)l. The next room was the hottest room in the bath, where you sweated out any and all remaining impurities! Then back to the first room for another scrub down, then back for another sweat down. Next they had cool pools to get in and cool down. NOW you are ready for your bath. The Great Room is the actual bath that you see in pictures. This is more of a social thing. It was the place to make your appearance—literally! Everyone’s naked and you are showing off how many servants you have brought with you and how many times you have visited the Bath.

At the end of our tour, I would guess that we were probably 120 miles from London. So we had a two hour drive back. I should have mentioned earlier that when we started, our tour guide said that this would be a bi-lingual tour. There were a number of Japanese tourists onboard. So our guide would talk in English for a while and break out in this 100mph Japanese talk of the same thing he told us. So anyway, he told us he was from Ireland, and he sounded kind of “limp-wristed” speaking English with an Irish/English/Japanese accent. It was pretty entertaining although I couldn’t understand a word he was saying half the time!

The Bad:

In our previous blog had mentioned that we would be walking the 15 minute route to our tour’s pickup point that the computer printed out. As I have said before, the English are in a hurry! I am now assuming that the 15 minutes was in reference to their walking, not ours! And we aren’t slugs either. Our little 15 minute jaunt turned into 25-30 minutes of fast walking. Luckily we had left early enough so we got to the pick up point with 5 minutes to spare---sweaty and tired at 7:15 AM before our long day had even started!

Our tour finished late at 8:45 pm. The tour bus was making 4 stops in London at various Tubes in order for all of us to make our way safely back home. We being the wise, honed, Tube users, got off at the first stop (mostly just to get off the bus) to make our way northward with only one transfer. Now consider the fact that we have been on our feet touring around and by now I, Maridee, just wanted to get home. We head off on the Piccadilly Line to connect to the Northern line to drop us off at the Angel stop. Our first suggestion that something might be amiss was the fact that the train was packed and it was nearly 9:00 PM on a Saturday night. We soon had the light bulb moment-mostly teens and young adults who were going to Piccadilly Circus!! Well, they would be getting off soon so standing packed in like a sardine for a few miles would be ok. There was literally no place to move forward or backward and Jim and I and half a dozen others were by the closing and opening doors. Another stop approached and a man tried to get on. He yelled for all of us to move in but there was no where for us to go. The Tube opens and closes on its schedule—not yours. So this man is trying to get in and the door closes and catches him on the head, he literally had to pull his head in just to get in. Poor guy was not happy, luckily he wasn’t hurt but a bruise, but he was MAD. Finally we get to a stop and the teens got off that freed up some space.

We find a seat to rest our weary legs and await our stop. As the stop prior to ours just about closes, we hear the announcement that our stop is closed for repairs and this is the closest stop to ours. We jump up, jump off and then wonder what the heck we are going to do. Their suggestion is a 10 minute (remember this is the British talking so it is more like 20 minutes) to the next station. We head off in the dark of night and find our next station- up stairs, down stairs, around corners, on escalators and finally hop on and make it to our home stop at 10:05 PM.

The Ugly:

We were hungry and we hadn’t eaten dinner so we decided to have a bowl of ramen at Wagamma (the best noodle and ramen shop around) at 10:15 pm. This is near our hotel and to tell you all the truth, we usually retire to our room around 8:00 – 9:00 every evening so being out at 10:00 or later is unusual for us. We are leaving the restaurant, tired, grumpy (Maridee is, not Jim) and ready to walk the final, short alleyway distance to our Hotel. The restaurant is on the 2nd floor of an open mall and we were walking down the escalator (of course it wasn’t working) and there is a group of young men hanging around in a group. All of a sudden a man comes running from the street area, grabs a hot sausage cart that was in the middle of the young men’s group and takes off running and looking over his shoulder. Now we are walking in the middle of this and the group of young men now takes off yelling at the runaway sausage thief. I say to Jim, let’s stay back in case gunfire starts. We slow down a bit, I am walking towards the other side of the street, and then Jim tells me to get out of the street a car was coming—a Police Car! The group of men had surrounded the sausage thief so the Police didn’t have to pull their weapons! I am walking towards our hotel, my heart is racing, and I am experiencing high anxiety, and can hardly wait to cross the threshold of our safe, London Hilton Islington Hotel!!!! OK Jim didn’t think gunfire would erupt but one can never know and I could just read the news in a small section of the Arizona Republic, “Local couple gunned down by a Sausage thief”!

This is why we always told our children, “Nothing good ever happens after midnight”. Print this post