Today’s adventure was pricey but a must-do: Stonehenge. Bad planning on my part and bad luck with the subway meant we had to take trains instead of busses, costing extra money. Lesson of the day: I fall asleep ridiculously fast. Passed out on the subway several times, on the train for a vast majority of the ride, and on the bus from Salisbury to Stonehenge. When it takes me long to slumber, it’s on the drop of a pin.
Got up at 6, but didn’t make it to Salisbury until 10:30. We got off the bus, walked a block, and I bonded with a local. “Excuse me, excuse me? Can I tell you something? Can I tell you something? What I want to tell you is that… I’m dying.” With odd quickness, I replied along the lines of “Oh, really? I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do for you?” He then walked away, not repeating his mantra to my friend or the tourists on the sidewalk behind us. I was puzzled for a minute then shook my encounter off as proof that there’s weird people everywhere. Maybe traveling’s making me harder, maybe I wasn’t that interested, or maybe I was still half asleep from the long train ride.
Salisbury had a beautiful cathedral. We wondered through the stone hallways, catching the end of an eerie service as we tried to avoid walking on the tombstones on the church’s floor. In addition to creepily many graves, we saw the oldest working clock, 1 of 4 surviving copies of the Magna Carta, and a flag that flew over a British unit deployed against the rebellious States. Considering that Salisbury’s only 30-odd thousand people, the cathedral and especially its main tower were massive; ridiculous amounts of labor must have gone into building it. Now, it draws tourists like me to interrupt the masses with my intrusive sightseeing. Considering that some of these people’s ancestors probably devoted their whole lives to constructing that monstrosity, Salisburians seem to have gotten the short end of the stick.
Next came that most famous family of rocks. Maybe it was the large amount of money I spent on transportation or maybe I napped on one too many buses that day, but Stonehenge wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. Yeah, it’s a huge mystery; yes, it’s a little eerie to see. But, I really wondered whether it was worth the good 6 hours of travel I put in. At least I know now: better than having to say “yeah, I was near Stonehenge but just too busy to every see it…” It was just something I had to see.