Get Outta London

It's important to remember that the UK is not London. I recently had this wake up call when I went on a day trip with some mates (that's what they call "friends" here, rather than the American translation for "sexual partners"). Although one of my friends had been planning this trip since the day he got here, as is his tradition in all of his activities, I jumped on the bandwagon last minute. Even had to take a forty minute bus ride the night before we left to print out my ticket. Waste of time really; they let you print them off at the bus station.


Tourist groups seem to be all about wasting time. I woke up at 6:45 am (in the student world where 10:30 = dawn, I accomplished something incredible.) At 7 we walked for half an hour til we reached the hotel where the tour bus would pick us up. Once we were on the bus, we drove around for over an hour, and I had the silly idea that we were actually going somewhere. In fact, we were literally driving around the same two neighborhoods for 65 minutes picking up other tourists, and I kept thinking "I could have slept an extra hour." Luckily the bus was ridiculously comfortable, so I dozed and talked a bit with some of the other students I hadn't met prior to the trip.

The guy sitting next to me was one of these students. The type of computer science person who gets really frustrated when others don't take everything absolutely seriously...We didn't talk much. Luckily there were two people in front of us who were perfectly friendly and the source of much lively conversation during our 3900 seconds of meandering around the neighborhood.

At last we arrived at the bus station, where we got off our bus to stand in a line to get on the same bus with worse seating. I was still sitting next to the same pretentious student as before, except there were no lively peers in front of us. This proved not to be a problem, because our tour guide began talking and didn't stop for two hours. He was a very informative and entertaining speaker, but not a great people-person. He had the habit of telling people, "shut up while I'm talking, you're ruining the experience for everyone around you." But I did learn a lot about Henry VIII and the gory details of Bloody Mary's execution and the title "village" has nothing to do with population but with whether or not there's a pub.

By the time he'd finished telling us about Queen Elizabeth's dramatic death, we'd reached Stonehenge. We got off the bus, travelweary and blinking, and collected our "personalized tours," which are basically headsets you wear around your neck. Most everyone stopped using these within the first five feet of the trail circling Stonehenge, probably because the British commentary included jackhammer sound effects that left your head rattling.

Stonehenge itself was incredible once I got around to the other side (we'd happened upon the only sunny January day in British History, so the first half of the trail was blinding). The upside to having the sun was that you could see the multiple layers of the structure cast by the stones' shadows. We took lots of pictures, which all ended up looking the same no matter what angle you took them from. I like to think that tourist photos are meant more as evidence that I've been somewhere rather than any great piece of photography.

I'm not sure why so many people have a problem accepting the idea that Stonehenge could have been built by humans. Conspiracy theories tend to underestimate humankind's abilities, both the good (the Pyramids, Stonehenge, The moon) and the bad (the Pyramids, the Holocaust, OJ Simpson). I'm pretty sure if aliens had built Stonehenge, I would have gotten better cellphone reception.

Our next stop was Salisbury, whose cathedral holds the oldest working clock and one of four original copies of The Magna Carta. I'm easily struck by clocks due to my romantic sense of symbolism, and spent far too much time watching the pulley-and-weight system tick and tock. I also wasted a glorious amount of time trying to read the Magna Carta, until the sash-wearing Official Answerer to Tourists' Silly Questions Guy told me it was written in Latin. Despite my dead language illiteracy, I felt the spirit of budding democracy from that piece of paper. It was a very moving moment.

Our last stop was in Bath. I'd already been informed by my Pride and Prejudice-loving aunts that Jane Austen lived in Bath. However, our tour guide informed us that he was "not allowed to tell you that Jane Austen lives in that house, there," because the owners were sick and tired of tourists knocking on their door and taking pictures on their steps. My advice to those owners is to not buy a house that once belonged to the most famous female British author next to J.K. Rowling if you don't want the annoying attention of die-hard fans. That's just asking for trouble.

By far, Bath was more beautiful than any part of London. I absolutely fell in love. And after speeding through the Roman Baths tour I spent an hour wandering about the streets, determined that there was not enough time in an all-inclusive day trip to absorb all of it, and went sadly back to the departing bus. The sun set as we exited the small city and I slept the remainder of the time home.

On an odd closing note, let me just say that my computer sciencey companion turned out to be quite shallow. When we arrived back at our dorm, I changed into different clothes, took off my glasses, took my hair down, and went to dinner. In the kitchen, the computer science student watched me and talked with me a lot. I thought, "This is great. He's finally being friendly."

Until he said, "Have we met?"

I laughed, thinking he was kidding, but when I saw he was not I said, "yes" and waited for him to put two and two together. His social math skills were lacking.

"When?" he asked.

I starred at him for a moment and said, "We just spent an entire day sitting next to each other."

Apparently he's only nice to girls who don't wear warm frumpy sweaters and glasses.