Bath. Don't touch the water.
Once we departed Windsor Castle we continued on through the English country-side, which just continued to get more and more picturesque as we went.
Oh, I'm certain there are non-picturesque bits of countryside somewhere in England, but it is difficult to believe based on what we saw.
If you are any sort of Jane Austen fan (as both my beloved wife and in-laws are), you are well aware of Bath and its therapeutic waters. Our primary stop was the Roman Baths that gave the town its name, but one could hardly ignore Bath Abbey.
Though obviously the building you see here was rebuilt at a later time, Bath is said to be where Edgar (the first king of England) was crowned in C.E. 973.
As I'm certain is quite obvious to my friends, I have a strange obsession with most things of ancient Roman construction. Going to the Mediterranean was really a cruise to pander to me, and though I was interested in London, I was pleasantly surprised to know exactly how Roman England is. Through my history classes I had learned about the Roman expansion through Europe and into England, but I don't think I was quite aware of how much of what we recognize today as England was set-up by the Romans.
Or perhaps I'm just a little late to the party.
Obviously the English added a bit to the Roman Baths in the 18th century, but once you get through the foyer you can see the original bath from the second level. As inviting as that water may not appear, you are given a warning not to make contact with it. Part of the concern is that the water in this pool still flows in through the ancient lead pipes, but from what I understand the pool is a great vector for infectious diseases.
I was content to look at the architecture; all elements above the square blocks surrounding the bath were constructed in the 18th century.
Once we had finished our whirl-wind tour of Bath we hopped on the coach again for a tour down to Stonehenge.
Stonehenge is hard to explain... it is equally impressive and disappointing at the same time... and the thing is, the feeling continues to shift as you walk around the structure. It is definitely a feat of ancient engineering to get the blocks to this location and into place. I was a little sad to find out that parts of Stonehenge had been reconstructed in the 60's... though it does explain why some older drawings/paints I had seen of Stonehenge made it look a lot more lean-y and disheveled.
In any event, Stonehenge was definitely worth seeing, and I can see why people have been fascinated by it for centuries.
And the birds like it, too.
After Stonehenge we loaded our weary selves back onto the coach and headed back to Londinium.
I think if I were to make a recommendation, I would probably not try to hit all three locations in one day. It is quite doable as our tour proved, but we had a very limited amount of time in both Bath and Windsor... and depending on crowds in that location you may not get to see very much. Stonehenge does not seem to suffer from the same crowd issue (being a wide open area), but I think one could only spend so much time there.
Though there did seem to be a lot of people hopping the fence to go visit the sheep instead. To each their own, I guess!