A raucous night last night. When we were at dinner there was a bachelorette party going on at the same time in the dining room; starting around 10pm that group, and a bunch of other pesky young people, were heading for the clubs. I was cursing the fact that my room faced onto the street (a thought I would come to regret today), and had to dig out my ear plugs. Oddly enough, when I woke up, I couldn’t find those plugs in my bed or on the ground around them anywhere. I was getting ready to leave when I noticed both of them in the shower; I don’t know if I was sleep walking again, or what. Odd though.
I got to the bus early enough to get the front seat, and shared it with one of the other single girls on the tour (we talked a little bit, but she’s from Japan and isn’t that great with the English). We left Bath this morning at 8am to fog. For the first hour or so, we couldn’t see much until the sun broke through the fog. But, by 9:15 we had arrived on the Salisbury plain to see Stonehenge. I was frustrated at first since we had gotten there 15 minutes before the site even opened and, from where we were standing we couldn’t see them across the road. But, when we finally got onto the site, I struck to the left while everyone else headed right; this meant that my shots of the circle didn’t have people in the background and the path was quieter. I walked around the monument, then headed back towards the bus. Behind the parking lot is a field held by the National Trust that has burial mounds in it. I had about 20 minutes until we were supposed to leave and, since there was no one in it, I decided that a nice quite walk would be helpful. I took the time to wander right up to the fence that surrounds the mounds (which put me about shouting distance from a herd of cows). The walk was nice, and when I got up to the top of the hill the mounds were on it was nice and breezy and cool.
From there, we headed to Salisbury Cathedral. Again, the tour director told us where we could get pictures, but said it wasn’t necessary to go into the cathedral, but we could if we wanted to. I took the opportunity and paid my student fee to get in. It was interesting and beautiful, but we couldn’t take pictures inside. Salisbury is renowned for holding a copy of the Magna Carta and the highest spire in England. After I wandered around the cathedral I headed into the town and had a cream tea at a little tea shop. There wasn’t much time to do anything else (we only had 40 minutes in the town), so I headed back to the bus.
On the road again, we headed to Arundel. This is the seat of the Duke of Norfolk. We had about an hour and a half to have a late lunch and wander around. There really wasn’t going to be time to view the large catholic cathedral that is in the town, nor the palace/castle, so I wandered the streets looking for a quiet place to have lunch. I found Belinda’s, a 16th century structure that had been converted into a tea house/restaurant. I had ‘potato jackets with cheddar’ which was a baked potato with butter and cheese. Yum. I started heading up the hill in town and stopped into a print store to see if they had any advertisements, but they didn’t; I still had quite the conversation with the proprietor about my thesis topic after the asked what I was doing; he gave me a bit of a diatribe on Americans and their coffee. When I finally got out of there, I kept heading up the hill for the view, then back down. I got some sherbet from a confectionary, then had to head back to the bus.
We left Arundel for Brighton but, because it’s Friday, the schools are on vacation, and the weather is beautiful, the roads were crowded and we got caught in traffic several times before getting into the regency town. We drove in along the water front and it was a nice view, but frustratingly slow. When we got into town we headed for Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, built by George IV during his regency. We were given an audio guide (which I’ve noticed has replaced actual people at all the stops where the company tells us that there will be ‘guided tours’), I went through a lot of the rooms, but my audio guide broke when I got to Queen Victoria’s rooms. Oh well, the really interesting parts involving the Oriental-inspired decorations were downstairs and I had already seen them, so it wasn’t the biggest loss.
From the Pavilion we went to the hotel. When we were told we were staying at the Brighton Beach water-front Hilton, I was expecting something completely different from what I got. I walked into the room as I was realizing that no, I wasn’t going to be having a water-front view (see what I meant about cursing my thought about getting a room on the front of the hotel? I’ve have killed for one today….), I then realized that my bed was a twin and jammed against a wall – my room is very long, pretty narrow and reminiscent of a servant’s quarter from the age when the building was built (except I’m not in the basement or attic, and I have a plasma screen TV – so you see, life is tough!).
After dropping off my things I headed out for a walk to see the ‘beach’ and would like to tell the Brits that no, you don’t have a beach, you have piles of rock that abuts the ocean – you should know that. I walked down one block along the main street, then tried to cut down to the water. I was wearing flats and rocks kept getting into them so I thought it would be better to just take them off (big mistake). So, I stopped and sat for a while, just enjoying the sea breeze and the view. Finally sucking it up, I walked down to the water to say I had dipped my foot in, and I did. It was cold, but not uncomfortably so. I then walked along to the beach to the pier along the water; there was a strata of harder, sand-like material that I could walk along, but walking about up to the boardwalk was hard.
When I got back to the hotel, I had a better chance to look over my room. As it turns out, I only had one set of towels (have you seen my hair?!?! I clearly need more than one towel…) and my toilet wouldn’t flush. On my way down to dinner I asked the front desk to send up someone to fix that (they did, but it still won’t flush….). As I was walking into the dinning room, a group of 3 invited me to join their table. They’re a mother, daughter, and the mother’s friend travelling together from Texas. They’re very sweet, but it’s like the walked out of a Rachel Ray catalogue; I listen to discussions about what the daughter’s kids would do this summer, recipes, and Church. Like I said, very cute, but the brain-trust, it wasn’t. Still, I could have ended up at the old guy you creeps me out or Twitchy McGee’s tables so, it could have been worse.
Tomorrow is the last day of the tour. We’ll be getting back to London by 3:30. I’m looking forward to getting onto my own thing. I still want to see the National Portrait gallery and maybe the London dungeon (now that I know where it is), and Kensington gardens. So, I’ve got a few more must-dos before leaving and only one day left on this trip. And, I’m looking forward to getting home.
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