The Best of Britain and Ireland -- Day Fifteen

The following is my journal entry (with pictures added) for Day 15 of my vacation to Britain and Ireland.

We were greeted this morning with a fire alarm in the hotel. Luckily, it didn't last long and we were not required to leave the building.

Other than that, we had a normal morning with normal hours of getting up, breakfasting, and getting on the coach. This is our last official day on the tour, and it was filled with very historic sites.

First, we crossed back into England over the Severn Bridge. We then drove through the original town of Pennsylvania and we stopped at the elegant Georgian city of Bath, famous for its Roman baths. We paid the entrance fee and toured through these ancient structures and marveled at the wonders of Roman architecture.

The entrance into the Roman Baths

The Bath Abbey

The Great Bath


The Bath Abbey as seem from the Great Bath

The Sacred Spring. Notice the steam rising from the water.


Another view of the Great Bath from a lower angle

What the whole compound looked like during Roman times

What's left of the temple pediment. The next picture shows what the complete pediment would have looked like.

A image was projected over the top of the real stones

Rooms in the Bath houses


Spring Overflow

Bath is also has the home of Jane Austen, but we didn't get to see it. We had to pick and choose, and we chose to see the Roman baths. I am glad we chose to see these baths, because this was one of my favorite places on this trip...though I say that about a lot of things from this trip.

We boarded the coach and continued eastward, stopping again at Stonehenge. What an intriguing mystery! We had 30 minutes there, so Kelli and I paid the entrance fee and ran around the monuments listening to the audio tour wands. It was SO COLD today! Probably the coldest yet. And being outside in the open hills with the seriously chilly wind did not help matters. Needless to say, we didn't stay long outside. We saw the site, took tons of pictures, then went back to the coach to thaw out.



Surrounding Stonehenge are hundreds of burial mounds.



After Stonehenge, we stopped in Salisbury for lunch. This cathedral in this city has the tallest medieval stone spire in the world. We didn't go over to see the cathedral, so I don't have any pictures. We had some lunch at a pub, walked around an outside market, then went back to the coach.

We ended our tour in London. We were dropped off at a VERY LARGE hotel were we said goodbye to our tour group. Some members were going to different hotels so they could start their next tours (some of the Australians were taking multiple tours back to back, since they have so much vacation time). We said our goodbyes to Christina and our bus driver.


Then we checked in to our room and had an early night. We are leaving back to the states tomorrow, so we have repacking and stuff to do. We also went to the nearby tube station for a quick bite to eat and a little more shopping trying to get rid of our UK pounds. We still have some more to get rid of...hopefully the airport shops will have things we want to buy.

This tour has been tons of fun....but I am extremely tired. I am ready to go home. Hopefully the Iceland ash cloud will not affect our flight home, but we shall see tomorrow.