England in the Rain....again

Fresh as a daisy after only a quick nap, Amy and I were off to England for the weekend. We arrived into London early in the morning, grabbed a bite to eat since we were STARVING, and dropped off our luggage and headed straight to the British Museum, which fortunately was across the street from our hotel. First off, the British Museum is enormous, and with so little energy, there was a lot we just cruised right through. The Greek stuff was amazing, just sad that they pried it off of the buildings and shipped it back to England. The central American exhibit was good, but we both know a lot about that stuff already. As lunchtime approached we headed out for our dramatic change into Egyptian Goddesses. Amy brought me a deadly wig from back home and we just had to go dressed for the occasion. Amy has been taking hieroglyphics for a few years, and can actually speak some Egyptian so it was great going with her an having her translate some of the sarcophagus' and other interesting items. We posed for photos and had a great time getting all excited about mummies, the Rosetta Stone, large stone carvings and of course Sekhmet! (I have a great story on why I like this Egyptian Goddess so much but that is for another day) This is when our energy really kicked in, and all thoughts of the night before dissipated.

We stayed until the very end, and saw all of the Egyptian stuff, and more! We de-Egyptified ourselves and headed into town for a bit of dinner at Savoir Faire and our Shakespearean play in the recreated Globe Theatre. It was not just one play, but more of a montage of Shakesperean plays all rolled into one large amalgamated production put on by Footsbarn Theatre troope. Think Oregon Country Fair. Lots of brightly dressed people running about spouting off quotes from the various plays. Through a riot of visual theatre, masks, dance, puppets, magic, circus and the juicy bits from the Complete Works it was Shakespeare for the attention deficit.A tightrope walking Juliet whilst playing the violin. Titania dropped from the Heavens by a large ribbon. After the play we went for a nice walk along the river wanting to grab a cab to make a quick drive by, so Amy could see the Tower of London. We tucked into our little hotel room for what we thought was to be a great nights sleep only to be awoke by the fire alarm at 3am, and having to head outside in the lashing rain. We were not happy bunnies since our alarm was to go off in a few hours....

As the rain continued to pour, we left for our tour. We hopped about our tourbus first stopping in Bath to take a look at none other then the old Roman Baths. There is a reason why Bath is called Bath, due to the natural hot springs. Go figure. We were only given 90 minutes in Bath, and were told the Roman Bath house would only take 30 minutes. Right so, we cruised through and skipped quite a bit of the boring stuff, but it still took us 80 minutes. We drank some of the natural mineral water, which was hot of course, and tasted of lead pipes, but we were hoping it would reinvigorate us. It did, since we had 10 minutes to run up a hill (in our wellies none the less) to see the Georgian Era Royal Crescent. It is just a huge curve of buildings overlooking a broad greenscape, but it is plastered all over our architecture history classes, so it was a must see. We took the panoramic shots and two photo-ops and were running back down the hill. They warned us that the bus was leaving promptly at 3:00 and they would leave us behind, and we arrived at 2:59. We made it on the bus just in time! We promised we would not be late again, though that would be proved challenging.....

Our next destination to discover was Lacock. This town is for the most part looks straight out of the 17 century except for the paved roads and the occasional car. This is also the town where the film countless period films, like Harry Potter. The bus let us off at where the film the Hogwarts scenes and let us wander around the town until dinner at The George Inn. We had a lovely supper and wandered through the town more. We went to where the bus dropped us off by, and there were only a few other people there. We started to worry since the time to leave was fast approaching, then the bus drove past us. We were meant to meet somewhere else, and forgot, so once again we were late. Next time though!

We were then off to Stonehenge! Luckily by the time we got to the main destination point the rain had subsided and continued to co-operate the rest of the day. We paid the extra money to run around among the stones and touch them, since most of the public just get to walk up to the fence set back three or so metres. Amy was super excited since this is what she came to see! We hugged, climbed, touched, rubbed, kissed and loved on those stones. I never thought I would see Stonehenge, and it was great to see it in person. Just a flat field with huge rocks brought from hundreds of miles away. Just amazing. We walked around everything and all over the site and made sure we were first back on the bus. We were not missing our ride back to London. We dozed on the way back to town and grabbed a small bite to eat before heading back to our place. By then it was midnight and we had another early morning flight to catch back to Ireland. We set our alarms and tucked in for a good nights rest only to be awoken again at 3am to a fire alarm, which we did not bother getting out of bed for and went off five minutes later. Annoying pranks by all of the high school students staying in our hotel. Once again, enjoying London in the lashing rain with a brutal hangover.