Big old rocks

The tour that a friend and I did last week was great! It was the same company we saw Scotland with and was an excellent way to visit major sites that we wanted to see but may not have had an opportunity to, as well as to see other things that were really interesting that we wouldn't have known about otherwise. 18 of us boarded the big yellow bus in London at the crack of dawn and headed to our first stop: Stonehenge. It was amazing seeing something so old and so famous that I had only read about and seen pictures of. Though it was roped off, we were still able to walk around the monument and with the admission, we were given an audioguide which provided interesting information on the arrangement of the stones and speculations on how and why they were laid. Our next stop was Devon, where we did a short walk up the "tor" (aka hill) and had a nice view of the surrounding area. We spent that night in Cornwall in Newquay, which is said to be the surfing capital of England. It was neat a town and our hostel was right by the water.

(I started this post forever ago but never finished it and now I'm in ITALY with a million more things I could write about so I'll quickly sum up the rest of the tour.)
We spent all of the next day in Cornwall, the south western part of England, stopping at various places along the way including St. Ive's- a quaint seaside town where we walked around and stocked up on the famous Cornish pasties, a light house with Caribbean-like views of the ocean, Sennen Cove from which we walked to Land's End- the most westerly point in England, Minack Theatre- an amazing outdoor stone theater built into a cliff overlooking the water, as well as other stops (including my first official cream tea- a delicious English specialty consisting of a pot of tea, a fresh scone, jam, and mounds of clotted cream). The third day we went to Tintagel-- where the ruins of what was supposedly King Arthur's castle remain, Glastonbury--a hippie town that also made Arthur claims and had an abbey and another fun hill to climb, Cheddar Gorge-- where cheddar cheese originated, and ended in Bath where we spent the night. We were free to do as we pleased until 12:00 the next day, so friends and I spent time just wandering around and gazing at all of the Georgian architecture and gardens and other things we came across. Of course we also went to the Roman Baths and it was so interesting to see what remains from when they were built 2000 years ago and how the area has changed. That was our final day of the tour so on our way back to London, we made several stops including Avebury- a giant though not as well preserved version of Stonehenge, and Lacock, an old fashioned village that hasn't really changed since the 16th century. It was a great trip!