Outside London Exploration

Carrie and I were both feeling like we were done with Britain and ready to move on to our next destination.
Not that London’s not completely incredible… because it is, and we’ve really enjoyed our time here.
But after visiting the Tate Modern Museum (not that impressive for us), and having a really cool dinner last night (at Dans le Noir – VERY cool!), and meeting some really cool Londoners (thanks for the great time Suzanne and Dai),

and knowing that we’re still slated for the Tower of London and the Jack the Ripper tour…
(is that enough prefacing for you?)
we were kind of feeling a bit done with London.
That is…
until we got out of London.
Which is what we did today, and now we just want to have a car here and drive all over the UK finding cool things to see. (Except that driving here is a bit nerve-wracking!)
Today, we went to the most amazing castle either one of us has ever been to… Windsor Castle.
I could bore you with a bunch of stats and figures about the castle, but then you’re bound to be bored with this site and leave.
Suffice it to say that if you like history, and you like artchitecture, and you like art, and/or anything about the royal family (or, if you just want to be amazed by how extravagant royalty can be), then you must carve out more than an hour for visiting Windsor castle, because there’s just no way it can be covered in such a short visit.
Just plan a whole day. It’s worth it.
So, let’s throw in a picture or two here, so you can see a bit of what we’re talking about.
We rented a car today.

…which meant getting up a little earlier than usual and getting to Heathrow airport on the Underground (Subway).
So we got a little Peugot.
And while some people may think that it’s difficult to drive on the other side of the road (coming from the US to England), it’s really not that difficult at all.
Here are the driving instructions they don’t give you at the car rental place:
1. Forget EVERYTHING you learned about driving in the US;
2. Let go of everything your intuition tells you to do;
3. Don’t drive the car on the side of the road you think you should be on.
Do these things and you will do just great driving through the English countryside.
End of manual.
Or, you can attempt to drive like we do in most parts of the world, and end up with a nerve-wracked experience.
(Incidentally, we chose the second option – sort of by default?)

I got the hang of the driving after a bit, although it wasn’t without its perils stories to follow at some later date.
So, the castle just blew our minds, and we really wished for more time here, but here are a couple of pictures.

Here’s a shot through the castle moat – pretty cool that they’ve converted it into a nice garden and fountain

A really cool courtyard in the upper part of the 13 acre grounds of the castle.

So, after leaving ourselves just enough time to really want to come back to Windsor, we decided to drive to one of the world’s most visited locations.
Stonehenge
It’s really a big pile of rocks. But one of the cool things about visiting Stonehenge is that the place gives off a really cool kind of peaceful feeling and is a really great experience.
Our tip for this location is to get the guided audio tour. It really explains everything and… best of all… it’s free! (You don’t see anything that’s free in England.)
So, this is us

And this is the pile of really neat rocks.

(This is one of our favorite pictures of the trip so far.)
And then, we debated. We knew there was this really cool cathedral in Salisbury, but it meant driving further away, again on the other side of the road… (and driving back in the dark on the London highways)
We decided to go, and we are VERY glad we did.
Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury is a neat little town, and the cathedral there is AMAZING! If you get a chance, go see it.
You’ll be able to see it from some distance away…

And here’s the inside.

The nighttime drive back was easier than the rest of the drive, although it did involve a 2 minor mishaps in two different roundabouts and a wrong turn (which left us on the wrong side of the street), but all’s well that ends well, and so hopefully we’re leaving you feeling well.
We sure are feeling great!
Thank-you for following our travels and stay tuned for more!

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