One Weekend, Many Adventures

Hello everyone!

I’ve been in England for a month now, which is totally crazy to think.  I have fallen in love with the city. I love the zebra crossing on the street with the black and white striped poles and flashing lights. I love the 30-minute walk to class where I pass two different parks, beautiful houses, and local pubs with floral baskets hanging on the roofs. I love having the world at my fingertips and having the option between seeing crowned jewels this weekend, or standing on the meridian line. Life in London is treating me very well.

This past weekend I have went on a trip to Bath, England. Now, this trip was with my school and included a guided tour to Stonehenge, Salisbury, Bath, and many things within it. I signed up for the tour only because of Stonehenge. Because I had no idea what the other places were, nor did it matter I WAS SEEING STONEHENGE. However, that trip turned into more than just Stonehenge. I fell in love with not just London, but the northern parts of England.

It started out on a coach bus, traveling outside of the city at 8 a.m. and of course I brought with me my Dominique Ansel cronut in which I had waited in line for three hours for their opening bakery in London…. still worth the cronut. Moving on.

As I looked out the window I notice the big city was gone and the fields and farms were all around me. It was nice. It reminded me of home. After two and a half hours we arrive at Stonehenge.

I don’t know why I assumed I knew what Stonehenge would be like. I cant describe to you most of the feelings and sights I witnessed which I feel bad for, but I will try my best. I assumed there would be a highway and it would be surrounded with buses and cars in sight. But it wasn’t. It was so much better. We had to take a bus 1.5 miles into the countryside to see Stonehenge. Surrounded by fields of grass was this massive collection of rocks. It felt as if I was still seeing a picture and I was wandering about in a dream. It was amazing. I even went to the gift shop and bought a patch for my collection.

Throughout my life travels it is important to decide what I want to collect from them. I didn’t want the simple t-shirt that you get a stain on in a week, or the postcard you hide away in a book and bring out once a year. I wanted more. So I decided to collect patches from every place I went. My grandmother and I are going to make a quilt and sew on the patches so I can keep all of my memories in my living room for my entire life. Tell stories again and again about my adventures. Look at it and think, wow that blanket has been all over the world. I hope one day to cover the entire thing.

But enough about patches,

From there we went to Salisbury. I had no idea what Salisbury was.  When we arrived I felt as if I was in an old English movie. The buildings were short, and most of them hundreds of years old if not all of them were. We went to Salisbury Cathedral, which was amazing. The art and the high gothic style ceilings were extraordinary. What I found interesting was the tombs throughout the inside. Some of them were bishops or even a royal knight. The time it took to make them must have been incredibly long.

We hopped back on the bus and rode off to Bath. Bath was incredible. The views were amazing. The guide told us to look out our window and it looked as if I was in Genovia… such a great movie. There was a bunch of cream houses scattered about the hills. All of them so old and in the same looks as they were when they were made.

When we arrived we had gone out to a local pub where two guys asked my friend and I to play a round of pool with them. We had mentioned how we were bad but they didn’t mind. We introduce ourselves and continue to play. And the end of the game we say our goodbyes and realize the next day they were professional Bath Rugby players… what?

We head off to the Roman Baths, which I was very excited for at this point. As we walk in we see the water system they have and how much time they must have put in to build such a system. The water being 117 degrees blew my mind. To be able to walk around the bath like they did back in the day was amazing. The tour ended with me being able to drink the water from the bath, which has been filtered. The saying goes it can cure anything you have, although I haven’t felt cured but rather allergies still occurring. It tasted not so great and probably wouldn’t drink for fun, but back in the day it must’ve been great ?!

Overall my weekend was amazing, and more than I could’ve asked for. I can’t believe I can call that a “weekend trip”.

What has been your favorite weekend trip?

Cheers xx Kalista