We had a free day on Thursday, January 13th so booked a trip with Evan Evans Tours to take a coach bus to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath. The bus picked us up in Bloomsbury and we drove for over an hour to reach Windsor Castle, which is currently the royal residence of The Queen. I was surprised that the castle grounds were set right in the middle of a cute, bustling town. We had to pass through security before we entered but I had thought there would be a lot more precautions taken. We were lucky enough to see the changing of the guards which was accompanied by music. That was so exciting! St. George's Chapel was included in the tour and was beautiful, however I personally thought Westminster Abbey was much grander. We also got to see The Drawing Gallery, which had drawings and sketches from the 1700s by Leonardo da Vinci and Hans Holbein the Younger! I was very interested in da Vinci's medical sketches from when he performed autopsies and sketched the body alongside his "mirror notes." There was also an exhibition of the work of the royal photographer, Marcus Adams. The exhibit displayed photos of Queen Elizabeth as a young child which captured her youth, yet one caption said that she appeared to be mature beyond her years already at eight years old. Some of the pictures taken by Adams of the Royal Family were the only thing available to the public before television, and I thought it was interesting how this made them closer to their subjects. The whole castle was beautiful and it actually felt like being in a fairy tale.
The next stop was Stonehenge, which was the destination I was the most excited for and was my favorite part of the day. When we got there, I could not believe that there roads so close to the ruins. Other than that, the structure was completely in the middle of nowhere. All that was along the countryside were some sheep and the tourists who had come to marvel at Stonehenge. I had imagined the stones to be a bit larger up close, but from far away they were exactly as I had pictured them and I took so many pictures of them from every angle. There was a pathway that circled Stonehenge and in some areas you were right next to the stones and others farther away. It was really breathtaking, especially after learning all about the impressive architectural feat from Art History and the fact that it has been there since about 3,000 BC. I thought it was absolutely stunning and I loved that we were able to fit this into our trip.
The last stop on our tour was Bath, located in the country of Somerset. This was such a change in scenery from Stonehenge; within an hour we were out of the country and into a huge city that had a beautiful skyline set in the hills of the landscape. We stopped outside Bath Abbey, however our main focus was The Roman Bath Museum. This is a major tourist attraction and it houses The Roman Bath house that is no located underground. The steamy water seemed very hot but we were warned not to touch it as it is untreated. The amount of steam rising up from the baths was incredible and it was considerably hotter just standing in the same room. These were the public bathhouses used early in the first century AD along with shrines built to honor the sacred hot springs. It is so interesting to see where people bathed that long ago, however the idea of a huge public bath seems quite gross to me and all I could think was how far technology and architecture has come. Overall the tour was great, my only regret was that we did not have more time at each event since they were such amazing attractions.
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