Day eight - Bath Stonehenge and london again

I love Cardiff. I woke up early and walked up St Mary's Street which turns into High street and came to Castle Street to see the wall around the castle.  Both St Mary's and High street were very quiet except for the street cleaners and sidewalk cleaners and gulls picking apart the garbage bags that the cleaners had just left out to be picked up and taken away. If those garbage truck guys don't get here soon they will have a real big mess to clean up again.
Last night this street was jam packed with party goers and there were several fights that Margie and I could hear from our hotel room on the 12 floor.
There are side streets which are malls, the space between the buildings covered with glass and very inviting, of course no one was open except for a drug store that did sell batteries for our cameras.
it is a lovely street.
went to the top of the street and  there was the castle , still there after all that revelry that went on last night. the  millionaire owner wanted a zoo but the city would not let him have one so he put lots of animals on the walls. All of them were lovely and some were very fun looking, like they had been partying the night before with some rather rowdy people.
passed the shop with the longest name in wales.  I took 7 photos to make sure I got all the letters. LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANNTYSILIOGOGOGOCH
which means
The church of St Mary's in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool and the church of St. Tysilio's by the red cave.
Seriously! it is that long and means that. I think welsh must be the most difficult language to learn.

After sprinkling mom and dad in a nice flower pot on the High Street, continued down to St Mary's Street and went back to the hotel and after leaving our luggage outside the room, Margie and I went back up St Mary's St and got some batteries from the shop that was open. 

 A nice hotel breakfast and onto the bus again. we crossed the mighty Severn river which some people surf on when the tide is right. it is a very wide river with a very long and high bridge.on one side is Wales and the other England.

in no time at all we were in BATH- What a beautiful city!
they told us to meet the bus back at the pickup point at ? time and we all followed Peter to the Roman baths where he had our tickets for a certain time to enter. we had about 30 minutes to fill so Margie and I wandered around a bit and grabbed a pastie at the worlds best pastie shop. they were really good.

The Pump room (Jane Austin) and in the square outside this skeleton driving a bike. The girl is from our tour group.

then we went into the Baths. I had no idea that they were as extensive as they were. not just one bath but several. cold. warm and hot with plumbing that still worked. amazing! we spent a good hour and a half to two hours in there and enjoyed every minute of it.

lots of fragments of statues ,pottery, buildings, and mosaics. some of them I would like to work into my garden back home.
The roman baths. Do not touch the water!! It is extremely polluted from ages and ages of lead charms etc being put into it. Very pretty though. of course there were folks who did touch the water but we did not have to watch them die a slow and painful death as we left the baths before they died.

We wandered the streets of Bath and stumbled apon Sally Lunns World famous bakery and cafe. of course we had to go in and I purchased three buns for the price of two. I had no idea they were as large as they were. and that the bakery gave me 4 of them not three. the oldest continuously operating bakery in England. Marvelous. Tom Baker (Dr Who in the 70's) had been there and left the comment that the buns were out of this world. we found our way back to the bus and left a bit of M&D in the park by the river.
 the bus continued on.

We travelled through lovely country side with partly cloudy skies. Peter told us of how in the old days tourists could go right into the stones of stonehenge but that they had in recent years changed the layout so that the parking was farther away and there was a little train that we would catch to take us to the stones.
We got our bracelets and did a pit stop and got on the train and went to Stonehenge. It was very windy and the stones were very big. Even though we were an easy twenty yards away they were still massive.
why did they build this? who built it. Wikipedia says

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in Wiltshire, England, about 2 miles (3 km) west of Amesbury and 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. One of the most famous sites in the world, Stonehenge is the remains of a ring of standing stones set within earthworks. It is in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds.

Archaeologists believe it was built anywhere from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. Radiocarbon dating in 2008 suggested that the first stones were raised between 2400 and 2200 BC,whilst another theory suggests that bluestones may have been raised at the site as early as 3000 BC.

-Margie. It was extremely windy that day.  we tried to look natural in our photos with gritted teeth and tearing eyes.

Dennie at Stone Henge having a mystical meditating moment!

The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. The site and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986 in a co-listing with Avebury Henge. It is a national legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage, while the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.

Archaeological evidence found by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2008 indicates that Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. The dating of cremated remains found on the site indicate that deposits contain human bone from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug. Such deposits continued at Stonehenge for at least another 500 years.

It was extremely windy that day.  We tried to look natural in our photos with gritted teeth and tearing eyes but mostly we just look wind blown.
there were several mounds around the henge that some people were walking to but we did not wander too far as we did not want to lose the tour bus.  did I mention that it was windy.

 we got back on the little train and back to the gift shop which was great. piked up some coasters and hats and fun things and then we were on our way to London.  the trip did not take that long but I think that we were getting tired knowing that our tour of ten fun filled days were coming to an end. it was basically our last day together as a group as when we got to London some were leaving the next morning.

We pulled into the Mercure hotel which is a very nice modern and clean and centrally located hotel.
Our tour group. Our last day we were all together. we said goodbye to willy and Peter gave us our packages for the hop on hop off bus and the tower the next day.
A few of us went to Harrods to check it out and it was in fact pretty spectacular as far as decor and big prices went Margie and I did in fact purchase something from Harrods. i got cheese slices and Margie got turkey slices so we could make sandwiches to take with us the next day. and for supper that night which was not included in our hotel stay that night. we repacked and panned out our next day and where we had to go( find the train station and figure out how to get tickets to go to flares in two days) find the tower and figure out how to get in with our photocopies of tickets) and what to do with the rest of our day.

we were exhausted from being in wales win the morning to bath and then stonehenge and then to london. it seemed like a nice relaxing day on paper.
Dennie outside our room at the Mercure Hotel in London