We had a broken night’s sleep due to the “Code Bravo” during the night. Definitely dragging. And the ship was creaking and shaking starting at 5:00 a.m. as it approached the dock. Ugh. SO NOISY. So ready to get off this ship and be in a quiet hotel room.
But first, we have to go through the disembarkation process, where we go through some crazy process as the ship’s crew smiles at us as they rather unceremoniously throw us off the ship.
We are transferring to London via the Very Last Excursion – Salisbury and Stonehenge. But the instructions in the meeting area make no sense, with no proviso for being able to sit towards the front of the bus.
So as the ship guy is lining up all the people for all 6 buses worth of us on this excursion, I just slip into group 1 instead of group 6 and march along with them, thereby following them through the gauntlet of stacked suitcases, cruise terminal twist and turns, and out into the coach parking lot to be the first on the bus.
How odd that I can understand both the tour guide and the coach driver! They both speak English! Everybody around me is speaking English! WOW.
Anyway, off we go, away from the cruise ship port of South Hampton, England. Our tour guide, Claire, reminds us that the Titanic sailed from this very port, but it’s safe now to tell us this because we’re off the ship.
We have a bit of a drive to Salisbury, through a national forest.
Salisbury itself is a medieval town. At first, Claire told us that we wouldn’t be able to go into the cathedral itself because of some performance rehearsal. So we satisfied ourselves by looking at the outside:
Everything but the spire was built in 38 years – an amazingly short time for a cathedral.
We were able to go into a side room and see the Magna Carta – sorry no photos allowed.
And then we noticed that people were indeed going into the cathedral itself, so we went too. So very different from all the cathedrals we’d seen for the last two weeks, and just spectacular:
We wandered around a bit more, and found the world’s oldest functioning clock:
It doesn’t have a face or hands – the time is chimed out by the church bells.
Eventually we headed back to the bus for the next stop – Stonehenge.
My first visit to Stonehenge was in 1977. Somewhere there is a photo of a 24 year old me standing next to and touching one of the huge stones. By time I went back in 1983, we saw it from some kind of distance, separated by a rope.
This time was a whole new deal: a visitor center, shuttle buses to the stones, audio guides, and a circular path all the way around the stones as the audio guide squawked and droned on.
Eventually I gave up on the audio guide and just enjoyed the stones:
Time now for our last bus trip – to London. Traffic wasn’t too terrible; we arrived around 4:00ish?
The bus stopped not quite at Victoria Station. All our bags were pulled out from under the bus and deposited on the sidewalk. Claire gave us vague instructions to walk down to the end of the block and keep going till we found Victoria Station and taxi cabs to take us to our hotels.
And then the bus was gone, and there we were, with our suitcases and bags, in the middle of London, without a clue as to where we were or what we were doing.
The bunch of us made our way down the block, like a bunch of ducklings following each other, crossing the street 3 ways via the cross walks to get to Victoria Station, where indeed the taxi stand awaited us.
Our hotel is literally 1/2 block away from Trafalgar Square. We walked passed it as we walked to the random restaurant we picked for dinner. The restaurant was very noisy and very loud. London itself is very noisy and very loud. I think I it’s louder than New York, which I did not think possible.
Well, here we are on land again. No rumbling ship engines. London’s noises are on the other side of the window. Kinda enjoying the quiet.
Tomorrow: our one day exploring London.
Maryland Meshugas 