Saturday, September 8, 2007

Splish splash

I'm staying in Bath. This morning at about 7 we hopped a train from Waterloo (in London) to Salsbury (an hour and 45 minutes away). This was my first train ride that I can recall, and I quite liked it. You know how on BART (or whatever your local mass transit subway system is) when two trains pass in opposite directions there's that boom? It didn't happen as we passed another train. Probably because we were outside in the English countryside and not in a tube under the San Francisco Bay.

The train was a Southwest Train, which amused me to no end. It's almost like a Mel Brooks joke, cause it's the cheapest possible train, and also the cheapest possible airline.

From Salsbury, we took a 20 minute bus ride to Stonehenge, which, of all the piles of rocks I've seen in my life (and that's a lot given my experience in construction) this one is certainly the most orderly. So British. The freeway is literally feet away from one of the stones. That's so L.A.

After that we mozied around Salsubury for a few hours - a very cool town. It's Saturday, so there was a farmers' market and a lot of cool stuff to see and eat for free. The bus ride to Bath was surprisingly fun. I got to ride through the English countryside (on the wrong side of the road no less) for two hours, sitting amazed at the Robin Hood-esque buildings and empty fields. Also, the Moby/Depeche Mode soundtrack made it like a music video. I'm trying to stick to artists from the UK or popular in the UK. The other day in Dublin, I heard a Mika song in a grocery store.

Tomorrow I'm going to go see some old Roman baths (thus the city name) and then hop a bus back to London for a few nights. The YMCA I'm staying at tonight (it's not all that much fun) doesn't allow USB hookups, but the Internet cafe aught to by my London hotel so there should be some art soon.

It's weird to be in a place so old. We saw one of four surviving copies of the Magna Carta today (hand written on lamb skin in 1215) in Salsbury Cathedral and realized that it's 4 times as old as our country. So, there's that.

I'll send emails and hopefully pictures from London tomorrow night (and I bet you all only ever read this at work anyway).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since you have now seen rocks (Stonehenge) and paper (for all intents and purposes the lamb skin Magna Cartna) will you now see scissors?

Also, since you have seen the more obvious, and quite frankly predictable, places in England, don't forget the Harry Potter tour in London.

Unknown said...

I enjoyed athenas comment more then hearing about you dinking blood, ( i know its water) you sick fuck , signed
nick standfield

Unknown said...

I seem to be really negative in my comments. I apologize for this. I was just being sympathetic to the boys back home.