Carmen’s mom is visiting and so we rented another car and went on yet another day trip. This time we head out west to a little town called Salisbury. It was a really cute town that was sort of typical English except for two very amazing things. The first is that it’s a cathedral town. And the second is that in this cathedral there is one of only four remaining copies of the Magna Carta.
The cathedral was insanely beautiful. It was massive and breathtaking. For those of you who have read Pillars of the Earth, you can imagine my excitement. I couldn’t stop looking at how intricate everything was. There are literally no words to describe how amazing the church was.
After muddling around the church for a bit we went to the Chapter House. This is where they keep the Magna Carta. I actually got to read the document that basically set the ball rolling on modern western democracy. (Okay not read because it was in Latin but nobody’s fact checking so…) Also in the chapter house they had friezes that depicted the first two books of the Bible. Friezes are carvings in stone that pop out in a 3D manner as opposed to being etched in. They had such incredible details.
After we left the cathedral we set off to try to find Stonehenge. I was in charge of navigation. We had a guidebook with a map of the town so we figured we were all set. Wrong. I’ve come to terms with a few things about roads in the UK. The major thing is that you can be walking on a street called Kings Cross Rd when all of a sudden it’s now called Bishop’s Gate. You didn’t change directions or turn a corner. They just got bored with the name. This I’ve come to accept. What I cannot except is when a map tells me that Queen St and Knight Rd are parallel yet I’ve somehow managed to take a right turn from one onto the other. Needless to say, there may have been some yelling and some swear words. But we figured it out in the end.
Once we were finally on the road to Stonehenge we saw a street sign for the funniest named street I’ve ever heard of. I can’t think about it without laughing. In fact, I’m laughing right now. The name of the street? Fugglestone.
Stonehenge was awesome. You can’t actually go up to the stones because they have it roped off but you can get about fifteen yards away. They’re enormous. It’s insane to think what it took to get them there. One thing we read said that some of the stone come from mountain ranges 250 miles away. That’s insane! It was raining and dreary the entire time but I’m so glad we saw it. Plus the dreariness made me feel a bit like Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Once we left Stonehenge we set out to find a nice little country pub to have dinner in. We decided to try some back roads in our quest. We didn’t find any open pubs or inns but something even better happened. I drove again. This time in a manual. And I felt vindicated because I know that everyone secretly though it wasn’t as cool when I drove the first time since it was manual.
After driving around a bit more we finally found a pub. It was the cutest thing and all the old men LOVED us. I don’t think they get a lot of tourists so they were really excited to hear our accents. While I was waiting at the bar for a drink one old man told his friend who had just walked in that they had celebrities in their midst and pointed at me. When the new arrival asked me what kind of celebrities we were I told him the really famous kind. They all got a kick out of that. We kept having them stop off at our table to talk to us. They were the cutest old men with the cutest accents.
After our massive day trip where we were very wet a majority of the time, we went home and crawled into bed.
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