London Day 11: Stonehenge & Salisbury

8:30 a.m. Christine, Alex, Claire, and I are absolutely exhausted and boarding the bus to Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. Ramon joins us, and we take over the "party seat" in the back of the bus ("party seat" = the row in the back of the coach bus that has five seats across so we don't have to split up). We immediately fall asleep for the duration of the 2-hour bus ride, although my sleep is very restless since I'm in the middle and don't have anywhere to put my feet up to get really comfortable. About 20 minutes before arriving at Stonehenge, the really annoying commentator/tour guide lady starts talking to us about the history of Stonehenge (really not that interesting) and how a bunch of people think aliens created it. Weird. She also told us a story about how there have to be guards on duty at all times because at night people try to do weird things there, such as conceiving a child during a full moon. She also mentioned a "crazy man dressed in a green spandex from head to toe" who went into it and danced around before running into the woods and not getting caught. She obviously doesn't watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I'm proud that green man made the appearance at Stonehenge.

Once we arrived at Stonehenge, we all piled off the bus into the wind, and walked around. Sadly, they don't let you up-close-and-personal with it because people kept trying to graffiti it. So, we walked around it, took some pictures, and were generally disappointed. I had hoped it was going to be really interesting, however, it was exactly the same as every picture I've ever seen of it have been. Just a bunch of stones in a formation. Hm.

We boarded the bus 45 minutes later to drive into the town of Salisbury to see the Cathedral. It was beautiful, but churches always make me uncomfortable, so that aura was a little weird. It was your typical Roman-style cathedral, and there were a ton of graves and monuments in it. We explored the entirety of the Cathedral, before heading to a special room where the Magna Carta was held. Sortof like Stonehenge, I was generally uninterested, but I'm glad I went anyways.

When we left the cathedral, we decided to explore the town of Salisbury, which was really cute. We walked around and looked at a bunch of shops before deciding to go find some fish n' chips. We went to a place called Stoby's, which may have had the worst service in the world. And I'm not exaggerating. Once we finally found a table, we had to bring the dishes downstairs ourselves. We also had to put in our own food order (it was a sit-down restaurant) after we had waited an obscene amount of time for a server to stop by. Finally, our food arrived, and it wasn't even that good. We were disappointed, but at least we were fed. We hung around and talked for awhile to kill time before the bus (it decided to start blizzarding outside, so we didn't want to walk around in it unnecessarily).

We caught the bus, napped the entire way home, and arrived back in London around 6. Everyone went home to get ready, and around 9 we met up again before going out to Shakespeare's Head for the evening. It was a really fun time, and Christine, Claire, and I were recruited to go talk to a 21-year-old British boy named Mark whose birthday it was. That was interesting, and it was nice getting to meet some British people. They thanked us for bringing beer pong over to the UK, along with other funny conversations. They had to catch the last Tube home, so they headed out around midnight. After that I went up to the bar with my friend Dave to grab drinks, and we stood talking there for about 30 minutes. Randomly, a British guy came up next to me and asked if I minded if he stand there. I really didn't mind. Then all of his friends came over and started squawking like chickens and flapping their wings. I excused myself from the situation, totally confused, only to have Dave explain to me that the guy who stood next to me was trying to get me to leave Dave, and that all of the chicken-boys were trying to call Dave a chicken. I seriously do not understand boys, especially British ones. At last-call we finished our drinks and headed home for the night, and I was finally able to sleep-in this morning. I'm probably going to stay in tonight, since I have managed to procrastinate my second paper for my Ireland class until the very last minute (go figure). However, it is probably a good idea anyways, since pubs are expensive and I'm cheap.