After spending the day cleaning, donating stuff, and throwing bags of leftovers and garbage away, I headed to O’Hare for a 9pm flight to London. However, it was already delayed until 10pm, and after we boarded we sat for another hour to fix a mechanical error. Also, Norwegian subbed our flight out to another smaller company, so we were on an older plane with small seats and literally zero entertainment for 8 hours. Ah well, I took some Dramamine and tried to sleep most of the flight anyway. After arriving 3 hours late in London, I took the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station which was super easy and convenient, and checked into my B&B. After settling in and taking a quick shower, I met up with a friend from high school times past that I haven’t’ seen in nearly two decades. It was great walking around Hyde Park and eating at Hard Rock Café with him and just catching up after being apart for so long. Then we walked back to my B&B and I basically passed out for the night.
Thanks to jet lag I was up early the next day and at the coach station at 7:45am for an all-day bus tour with Premium Tours. Our tour guide was friendly and engaging and the bus was comfy enough. Our first stop was Windsor Castle, where I wandered the grounds, toured the interior of the castle, visited the gorgeous church, and watched the changing of the guards. I had to get back to the bus so I left right after the guard band started playing “It’s Not Unusual” by Tom Jones, which was hilarious. Our next stop was Stonehenge. Y’all, look, if you like ancient history, mystery, and really big COOL rocks then Stonehenge is a must!! If you’re the type of person that goes…they’re rocks, who cares? Then you can probably skip it. I’m the former, and loved loved LOVED it. I was really disappointed that we only had a half hour to walk around, I could have used another hour at least for walking around the entire area, reading the signs, and listening to the audio tour. That being said, there was a nasty thunderstorm approaching so even if we had longer we would have been stuck inside. I definitely need to go back there, perhaps next June 21st when they have their huge summer solstice celebration! After Stonehenge we headed to Bath and got an hour to wander and shop. Bath is a cool city, but I’m not sure I need to go back. If I did, it would mainly be to stay the night at the hotel that lets you use the hot spring water…that sounds unique. After Bath we drove around the Cotswolds area and went to Lacock where we stopped at The George, a really old traditional country pub, for a local made hard cider and fish and chips. Delicious! This is also where some houses were used for Harry Potter so we saw the Slughorn and Potter houses. Next to the Potter house is an old church, which although is indeed very old is actually a functioning modern community church. It’s not particularly big, but it’s cute, and most importantly there’s this black cat that hangs around and tries to sneak inside so often they actually have a sign posted telling visitors NOT to let the cat in! Oh, that cat kept trying so hard to charm us and sneak in though, I took advantage and made friends. Afterwards, we all returned to the coach for the long 3 hour ride back to London. We didn’t end up getting back until after 9pm, so I walked back to the B&B and ended up in a conversation with the caretaker Simon about travel and food and life in general before heading up for bed. Lynton Hotel isn’t fancy or modern, and kinda tight to be honest, but the owners are super friendly and the breakfast smelled delicious.
