We got an early start this morning and took the metro to the meeting point for our bus tour to Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge. We thought we would be early birds, hoping to get prime choice for seats on the bus and were somewhat shocked and a little dismayed to see our bus already almost full when we arrived. However, we managed to get seats together and it turns out because we were so early, we got on the first of six buses all doing an identical tour and got to depart ahead of schedule and got to tour the destinations in a different order than the other busses (we got to go straight to Bath and stopped at Windsor last instead of first), which allegedly would help us to dodge some of the heavier crowds.

When we arrived in Bath at 9:45, we were told to be back on the bus by 11:10, so we had just short of an hour and a half to explore, which turned out to not be very much time at all. Fortunately, our tour guide had given us a fair amount of history on the bus on the way there, particularly about the roman baths that had been re-discovered and preserved, with a museum built around them. This let us be a little choosier about which audio guide prompts we stopped to listen to, mostly focusing on the special prompts recorded by Bill Bryson, an author we both like. Unfortunately, the museum was VERY crowded so it still took quite a bit of time to get through, but it was still really cool to see how well preserved the baths were and try to imagine what they would have been like then.

We realized there was definitely not going to be time during any of our stops to have a real sit-down meal, so we grabbed some sandwiches on the way back to the bus and took off for our next stop: Stonehenge. Again, our tour guide gave us a lot of good factoids on the drive, which really helped because once again we had just a little over an hour to explore and our downloadable audio guides never actually finished downloading. We would have liked to have spent more time in the Exhibition about Stonehenge, but by the time we got the shuttle from our bus to the actual Stonehenge site and back, we had just barely enough time to make a quick loop through and use the facilities before getting back on the bus.

Our last stop was Windsor Castle and… true to the theme of the day… we had two hours there and still not enough time to truly do it justice. We were there late in the day and a lot of the indoor attractions were about to start closing in phases between 4 and 5 pm. We darted for Saint George’s chapel (where Queen Elizabeth II is laid to rest) and made it there with just 15 minutes to spare before it closed. Then we darted over to the State Apartments and made it there with just 15 minutes before it also closed for the day. Repeat for Queen Mary’s dollhouse. Needless to say, we blew through everything pretty quickly so we could see it all, but didn’t get good long looks at much of what we saw.

Finally, we boarded the bus yet again and headed back to London, taking “the tube” back to our hotel, making a quick stop for some doner kebab before spending the evening organizing our suitcases for the flight home.

Today’s Highlights:

• Very old concrete pools that smell like rotten egg farts
• Big rocks stacked up on each other in a mysterious and seemingly haphazard pattern that is actually a very functional calendar
• Chuck’s glee that a fellow tourmate from our bus got left behind at Stonehenge because she didn’t make it back to the bus on time; he sure seems to like it when people get left behind on public transportation (see blog post “Tea & Trains” for a recap of the most recent time he left me stranded in a metro station)
• Not personally getting left behind at any of our tour destinations
• Being overheard saying “Over there! That looks chapel-y!” by a castle steward while looking for the chapel and having him agree that, yes, it did look about as chapel-y as a structure could look
• Beautiful stained glass chapel windows experienced in an orderly one-way queue around outer aisles of the chapel
• Lavish royal apartments full of pretty, shiny things, many of which were probably appropriated from other countries
• Doner kebab

Tomorrow’s Proposed Adventures:

• Schlepping all of our luggage to the airport
• Flight home
• Puppy snuggles