Thursday, 5/26/16
We slept in till around 9:00 AM or so, which ended up impacting our day. We went downstairs to check out and asked for a taxi to the Hertz pick-up location at the airport. We had discovered that my cell phone was definitely not working, which was disappointing at best. We had a large file of Mapquests printed out, but obviously, those become of limited use if you need to stray from the plan even the slightest bit. We definitely needed to stray from our original plan of starting the day with a visit to
Seven Sisters Chalk Cliffs since we had woken up later than intended. Francisco pulled together some alternative Mapquests for us.
Our first stop with our rented Mercedes-Benz was
Tesco, which is the third largest retailer in the world and similar to a Target or Wal-Mart. I literally get so excited to grocery shop in foreign countries.
We hadn't eaten since our crappy airplane meals, so we made a beeline to the Cafe and shared a Goats Cheese & Onion Chutney Flatbread and a side of Chips. We picked up water and some other snacks for the road.
Our revamped plan was to swing by
Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited castle in the world. We stopped at Castle's Pantry for some ice cream, but we were really just in this area for a quick photo stop.
The area was actually super-cute - once you found parking - and of course, I wish we'd had more time here.
But we had a big stop still planned for the day, and we had pre-booked this back in the States. I was so excited to see Stonehenge!
Now we knew we couldn't get up close to the stone circle, and honestly, if you find yourself in England and you have a decent zoom on your camera, you may want to save yourself some money and take some pics from the road cuz' it's definitely visible from there!
For us, there was no way we could pass up the opportunity to get as close as possible to such a significant piece of history.
We'd bought a tripod, but we ended up making better use of it as a super-selfie stick, lol.
Since we were navigating solely with Mapquest today, we spent a fair amount of time being lost, so we were running late for everything.
Old Sarum, the site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury, was closed by the time we made it there, but we still stopped here briefly.
 |
| View of Salisbury Cathedral from Old Sarum |
We were staying at Webster's Bed and Breakfast in Salisbury, but we of course ended up horribly lost. We had gotten to the point where we were going to backtrack to the last time we for sure knew where we were when all of a sudden Francisco spotted a rare street sign, and we realized we had accidentally found the place. The owner had emailed me back in the States for our expected arrival time, and luckily we made it within our designated time frame. The B&B was small, but nicely maintained. I loved the bathroom - the skylight really brightened up the space. It was surprisingly quiet even though all the rooms are in close proximity. Our host explained that there would be a continental breakfast in the morning, and if we wanted something hot, we needed to make our selection the night before, so we each ordered the Full English Vegetarian Breakfast.
 |
| Room Interior |
Our host had given us a map and explained that the
Salisbury Cathedral was only a 10-15 minute walk away, so we headed out.
It was too late to go inside the cathedral, but we were at least able to walk around the outside a bit. It has the
tallest church spire in the United Kingdom, and it has the best surviving of the four original copies of the Magna Carta.
 |
| Middle: Rising; End: Minator and Lady Hare Torsos |
We stopped at The King's Head Inn for dinner. We sorta felt just as lost as we did when we went to a restaurant in Japan since this was our first visit to a pub, and we sat there for a really long time with no one coming to take our order. I finally prodded Francisco enough for him to go up to the bar and see if we were supposed to order there. As soon as he left the table, I found the small print on the menu that stated: "Please note your table number and place your order at the bar." We had the Vegetarian Wellington and some Sticky Toffee Pudding. They were out of gravy, so they substituted nacho cheese sauce with the wellington, which may not have been the best accompaniment.
Our first stop with our rented Mercedes-Benz was Tesco, which is the third largest retailer in the world and similar to a Target or Wal-Mart. I literally get so excited to grocery shop in foreign countries.
We hadn't eaten since our crappy airplane meals, so we made a beeline to the Cafe and shared a Goats Cheese & Onion Chutney Flatbread and a side of Chips. We picked up water and some other snacks for the road.
Our revamped plan was to swing by Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited castle in the world. We stopped at Castle's Pantry for some ice cream, but we were really just in this area for a quick photo stop.
The area was actually super-cute - once you found parking - and of course, I wish we'd had more time here.
But we had a big stop still planned for the day, and we had pre-booked this back in the States. I was so excited to see Stonehenge!
Now we knew we couldn't get up close to the stone circle, and honestly, if you find yourself in England and you have a decent zoom on your camera, you may want to save yourself some money and take some pics from the road cuz' it's definitely visible from there!
For us, there was no way we could pass up the opportunity to get as close as possible to such a significant piece of history.
We'd bought a tripod, but we ended up making better use of it as a super-selfie stick, lol. 
Since we were navigating solely with Mapquest today, we spent a fair amount of time being lost, so we were running late for everything. Old Sarum, the site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury, was closed by the time we made it there, but we still stopped here briefly.
Our host had given us a map and explained that the Salisbury Cathedral was only a 10-15 minute walk away, so we headed out.
It was too late to go inside the cathedral, but we were at least able to walk around the outside a bit. It has the tallest church spire in the United Kingdom, and it has the best surviving of the four original copies of the Magna Carta. 
We stopped at The King's Head Inn for dinner. We sorta felt just as lost as we did when we went to a restaurant in Japan since this was our first visit to a pub, and we sat there for a really long time with no one coming to take our order. I finally prodded Francisco enough for him to go up to the bar and see if we were supposed to order there. As soon as he left the table, I found the small print on the menu that stated: "Please note your table number and place your order at the bar." We had the Vegetarian Wellington and some Sticky Toffee Pudding. They were out of gravy, so they substituted nacho cheese sauce with the wellington, which may not have been the best accompaniment.
Comments
Post a Comment