Pug’s Place

On Tuesday after I finished writing the above we arrived at old Sarum Castle, the ruins of one of Britains first stone castles build by William the Conqueror. The walled keep is not nearly as large as I thought it would be, but the walled town around it was massive. It felt strange parking our bus atop some peasant’s house. Following that we went into Salisbury and visited its cathedral, walked around the town a short while before heading to a pub next to one of Sting’s houses in the countryside for lunch. Tastiness.

After lunch we had two more stops: Stonehenge and Avebury. Stonehenge was exceedingly impressive, and on top of its natural coolness there were 40 (or so) druids there in the center of the circle celebrating the first noon after the solstice. Cool to watch in addition to looking at those small bluestones, the barrows and the huge standings stones. But Avebury was just as interesting even though I hadn’t heard of it.

Look up Avebury - it’s a massive circle of stones (actually 3 circles) that must have had some cool purpose. And these stones weren’t roped off so we got to touch and poke them. I got pictures!!

Yesterday we woke up, went to Harrod’s (which was better than a normal department store, but only due to its size and expense. It, too, would get boring, just not quite as quickly), wandered around Picadelly a bit. Christi though was not feeling well and after lunch caught a cab back to the hotel leaving Chris and I to search for Europe’s (or is it just England’s?) largest bookstore. We found it, I don’t know the name though. The Sci-Fi/Fantasy section was roped off due to “flood damage” so we stormed across the street to Border’s before going back to the hotel.

Speaking of storms, it rained all day yesterday with a bitterly cold, strong wind. It’s as cold or colder than winter in Gainesville which is crazy since it’s $@#^ing June!

This especially sucked last night at the Globe Theatre. At least we were in the tower boxes - the poor Groundlings stood in the 54 degree Fahrenheit cold rain! The show - Much Ado About Nothing - was very well performed and it was performed by an all-female cast. Some of them were more convincing than others but to keep things short, I enjoyed it! Unfortunately, Chris and Christi buggered out at the intermission to stay inside in the warmth, as did a quarter of the Groundlings. I enjoyed the conclusion of my first viewing of Much Ado… by my lone and got to see a 10:20 sundown plum-colored sky over the bowing cast for my pains (or chills!).

After the show I met Chris and Christi back in the lobby and we kept missing cabs that we called for! It took us 45 minutes to get a cab - everyone seemed to catch ours before we could get to it.