touring South England

Monday was the first visit to the English country side as Lloyd, Judy and Sarah bussed to Stonehenge, Salisbury and Bath. Our tour guide provided great commentary along the way and gave an interesting hsitory of the attractions. Stonehenge stands in the middle of a field in a rural area of Southern England. Great engineering accomplishment; an 800 year project over 3000 years ago. Some many unanswered questions!

From Stonehenge, we travelled to Salisbury where we had lunch in a pub, where else! and visited a cathedral. This is a wonderful edifas constructed in only 36 years in the 1200's. This is a great archicturtural structure, very elogant and in our opinions, as impressive as the Abbey, although fewer tombs. This building houses one of the authentic reproductions of the Magna Carta. There are only 6 of these in the world, and they were scribed by hand by Monks, using a quill pen. The one we saw was over 900 year old.

Bath is a very interesting city of 80,000 persons. It is known for the healing power of its bubling, hot springs. It has a world known hospital there for healing arthritis. In Roman days, the Romans constructed very elaborate bath houses and saunas, and the rich lived very pampered lives, however when they left the Victorians let the filtering systems fall into disrepair, and parts of the ancient city were buried in silt. It was in the 1800's when some excavation uncovered the ruins of the baths. The place is kinda magestic, very beautiful and a very expensive place to own property and live. A wonderful place to visit though, and a must see.

We are using this day to relax and do some local siteseeing and shopping in the area of the flat. Sarah was off to school this morning, to check out her classroom and prepare for Monday. Tomorrow, (Wednesday) we three are off to Paris, via the Eurotrain, under the English Channel. Should be an enchanting time in Paris. We'll report on the Paris experience at the weeks end.