This trip happened awhile ago, I am just very behind!  So much work to do these days...

Stonehenge: Welll, the Brits weren’t kidding when they said that it was a pile of rocks in the middle of a field—because that’s exactly what it was!  It was a short trip (about an hour) and I was just sitting there reading when all of a sudden, Jonathon was like, “Annnd there it is, just out the window.” And there it was. The fields were so green (all that rain!) and the stone were so…not that big.  I’m not gonna lie, they were a lot smaller and less impressive than all the storybooks made them out to be.  And then we stepped out the door and wham!  It was freezing!  Seriously, the wind was strong enough to suck up a small child!  Andrew Butterworth (an eccentric but awesome history buff who is also the internship coordinator…score!) gave us a quick history of the place but owing to the cold, the really loud winds, and just distraction in general, this is what I remember:

-the smaller stones were from Wales, 250 miles away, the bigger stones added hundreds of years later from 20 miles away

-Julius Caesar thought it was built by druids

-scientists recently found a wooden henge buried a few miles away

-over the years, stones have gone missing because people stole them to use in various buildings

-the first Stonehenge tourist came from Switzerland 300+ years ago

Salisbury: a heck of a lot prettier than the American version!  The city was quite nice, and pretty and everything.  We were quite fascinated with the canal—it was filled with swans (actually native to here!) and so everyone whipped out their cameras.  My friends and I were also somewhat fascinated with a submerged shopping cart that was in the middle of the canal with a bird perched on the handle.  The Cathedral was gorgeous—of course!  It would have been nice enough, but Andrew Butterworth’s talk again made it wayyy better!  We even saw the Magna Carta and I impressed everyone with my knowledge of the history on the English language!

Lacock=an adorable English village in which Harry Potter, Jane Austen, and several other famous and not so famous movies have been filmed.  The reason for this is because not much has changed since medieval times.  The paved the roads, they added cars, they put up some aluminum signs (enough to count on two hands…), and they people there learned the concept of personal hygiene (they got over their intense fear of bathing at some point) and threw away unnecessary article of clothing like corsets and veils and such.  In literally 10 minutes, you could turn this place into a Medieval village! 

Features of Lacock:

-A small brig for putting excessively drunk people into until they sober up

-Authentic, thatched roofs

-a ford (road that goes through a river) about 30 meters long that cars drive through

-Adorable, medieval cottages

-Authentic medieval smells, and authentic horse poop on the streets

…and lots more .

We ate in a pub that was the oldest working pub in the UK, and it was delish!  They had the food all ready for us (I of course had the veggie meal) and despite it being wayyy to early to eat (we’d only had luch like 2 or 3 hours before) we ate every bite.  Plus dessert! Then we did a pub quiz )in teams) and we got 11/12.  They only question we got wrong was about math—we mis-converted  feet into meters. Oops.