September 30, 2015

We made it to England…YAY (sort of).  We are happy to be in England, we have been looking forward to getting here, but it is bittersweet because it means our trip is almost at an end.

We flew from Dublin to Gatwick and spent two days here so that we could hit some of the outer areas from the city.  We decided to rent a car instead of taking a tour, which turned out to be much cheaper  We picked up the car from Gatwick so that we could be on our own schedule to spend the day out at Stonehenge and to visit the town of Bath.

First off…driving on the left hand side of the road was a bit of an adjustment, but Adam did great.  It was pretty weird for me to be sitting in the passenger seat on the left hand side of the car.  Luckily, we didn’t have an issues and got to Stonehenge in decent time.

Stonehenge was pretty cool.  They have a really nice visitor center and the area is beautiful.  The only problem was that it was very windy, so it was a little chilly.  We overcame that issue by starting the trip with hot chocolates!  We spent about an hour walking around the area, looking at the rocks and going through the visitor center.  It is really amazing to think about how they would have built these without our technology…it made us think a lot about Egypt again since they were about the same time period as the pyramids and similar feats.  Definitely a neat place to go and worth the drive out.

After Stonehenge, we continued our way west and went to the town of Bath.  We had a few issues getting into town, but managed to find our way eventually.  By the time we got there, we were starving!  We found a place right inside of town that sound Cornish Pasties…they looked like calzones, but had all different fillings.  They were amazing!  The dough was more like a croissant, so they were super flakey.  Hayden had cheese and bacon, I had chicken and chorizo and Adam had steak and cheese…they were all super good!  After that we walked into town a little and managed to (by total luck) find the Roman Baths.  The Baths are in a nice square with the Bath Abbey and the entrance to the Baths.  We sat in the square and finished eating before going through the Bath.

The Roman Bath was very cool.  Especially after spending some time in Rome, we really thought it was amazing how big and grand the Bath was especially since the houses and everything back in Rome were so small and close together.  The hot springs were really cool and the way they had all of the pools set up would have been so neat to visit back in the day.

Some of the remains from the temple and the surrounding area are still on display and they are in pretty decent shape…very cool to see.  I think one of the best parts is that you can see how the hot springs still flows today.  They run in basically, a river under the entire complex and you can even see the steam coming up.  \

At the end of the tour, we got to drink the spring water.  It was warm and had a distinctive taste to it.  Not terrible, but definitely not something that I would want to drink on a regular basis!

After going through the Bath and looking around the Abbey, we had to find Sally Lunn’s…it is the oldest house in the town of Bath and dates all the way back to 1680.  Supposedly, they have really good buns, but we opted to get fudge instead for our snack.  🙂  Our last stop was walking around the park in the center of town before we headed back to the car to get back to Gatwick.  We left a little early, but wanted to avoid driving in the dark since we were still trying to acclimate to the other side of the road and the different traffic signs.

We did manage to make it back in one piece and tomorrow we will head into London for the most excited day ever (according to Hayden)…Harry Potter Studio Tour day!!!!  He’s only a tiny bit excited.  🙂