I spent a day in Oxford last weekend- no really outstanding pictures from that but it was really something seeing the city and walking around it. We payed extra to see Christ Church College- part of that was used for Harry Potter- and it was really beautiful. I can't really picture people going to school there, but then again I didn't see any classrooms either.
The day after that was when it got really awesome...
We took the train out to Salisbury, then from there went on the Stonehenge tour. Imagine a somewhat curvy country road, riding in a doubledecker bus at alarming speeds. Yeah, scared me too. And then we're driving through a big open area of fields and the driver says, Look Forward, and there it is. And then we actually get there and get out of the bus and walk under the road and onto a little sidewalk and right up to the stones. I couldn't have been more that 20 or 30 feet from the stones at one point. THAT CLOSE. All that was keeping me from them was this little, tiny, chain on some posts about a foot high and not a guard in sight. If we weren't all thinking the same thing I'll be surprised but no one jumped the fence. I think I took about a hundred pictures right there.
It was an audio tour too, which was interesting. It needed better writing but it was about an hour long and really informative. Except for the part that said "...and then the stones were levered up ramps of dirt and lowered into holes in the ground, upright, like teeth into the gums of the earth.". You could see the moment where everyone got to that part of the audio track. The looks of horror.
After that we went to Avebury which is... A big hill. A gigantic hill with trenches and such. And while we were climbing it we took a wrong turn and walked about 3/4 the way around the hill instead of straight to the top like everyone else. Let's put it this way, I explained two years of Days of Our Lives plot lines while we walked, that's how big the hill is. Finally we found a way up and played with some whippets on top of the hill (Fergus and Alfie) and watched one of them climb a ten foot stone wall like a spider or a goat.
From there back to Salisbury and the market (where we bought freshly made donuts and dried apples) then to the Cathedral which has the most incredible baptismal font in it. It sort of doubles as a reflecting pool and gets a large portion of the stained glass in it. I took a picture but it was pretty dark in the cathedral. It's not worth posting on here.
This is Brighton, where I went on Tuesday night.
It is the dodgy capitol of the world. (Dodgy = Skeezy). If you have seen The Lost Boys and/or a pier by a beach with amusement park rides on it, you have seen Brighton. We hopped the train after our field trips were done and an hour later we were at the seaside. Which is another reason to love the train system here. An hour that I spent eating a sandwich and writing in my journal, then knitting a glove, and there is the freaking ocean! I think we spent two or three hours in the town, laying on the beach, throwing rocks in the ocean, riding a carousel, walking on the pier, then eating the best Chinese food I have ever had in my life. And then we came home.
Oh, and I threw seaweed at Sarah and she screamed.
Tonight we went to see WarHorse which probably the biggest play in all of London. It's about this boy named Albert who has a horse named Joey who gets conscripted into WW1 and then Albert joins the war even though he's 16 to go track down his beloved horse. All of the horses are done with these incredible wicker frame puppets. There is no moment you do not believe you are seeing real horses.
Tomorrow I leave for Cardiff!
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