DAY FORTY-THREE: STONEHENGE!

Just back from the Greek restaurant, where they threw plates on the floor and served us a white whine called "Magic Mountain."  No joke on either of these, though I didn't actually see the plates.  I heard them though, and the guy at the next table, who had a clear shot at seeing the plates, confirmed.  Per Sandra Bullock, a large party was "doing something like the hora" when the dishware abuse took place.

But it's not just as a survivor of plate genocide that I come to you today.  Do I sound different today?  Is it because I've been to Stonehenge?  Is it because I visited a room called "The Dungeon" in England's oldest pub?  Is it because I know exactly why the second-century Romans suddenly decided that men and women bathing together was verboten?  Or is it because, while today my treatment of plates was admirable, my treatment of bees was downright sadistic?

All of this happened today.  I am here to tell you about it.  Rick Steves, if you're still reading because yesterday's post demonstrated a fresh new voice in travel writing, please peel off here and check back tomorrow.

Here's how it went down:

You never know what you're going to get on these tours you buy.  You can get a 16-passenger Mercedes bus with no air conditioning.  You can get Grant, the Shetlands lifer who writes sci-fi in his spare time.  You can get two days with George.  You can get a high-speed, stomach-churning pass through the Ring of Kerry.

Today we got a very casual, very personal run to Stonehenge, led by a guy whose nickname, Phoenix, happened when his boarding school classmates in India decided his nose resembled the cover of their favorite Grand Funk Railroad album, "Phoenix."  He was nine years old at the time.

We also got a co-pilot named Sena (definitely misspelling this) and a family of four from Boston.  Everyone started talking to each other immediately.  The day ended at the Oldest Pub in England (TM), where we drank beer and went deep on education, faith and bubonic plague.  It was that kind of day.  Sometimes you get them.

Seriously.

But first, Stonehenge.  If you are in England, near England, thinking about England, or wondering what aliens were doing on Earth in 3000 B.C., go to Stonehenge.  Go early like we did so the crowds are manageable.  Sit down at a picnic table with your guide, if your guide is Phoenix, and discuss at great length the possible sources of Stonehenge.  Wonder how people with only rudimentary tools dragged two-ton rocks 132 miles.  Consider their advanced knowledge of geometry and wonder why you can draw a straight line from Stonehenge to the pyramids of Giza when Stonehenge was built 1500 years prior.  Ask yourself who was project managing this task (Phoenix did).  If you're brave, raise the possibility that maybe Stonehenge was built by an advanced civilization that eventually disappeared without a trace, then start sweating a little bit when you realize that this could be possible.  

We did all of this and then took a bus to "the stones."  I'm still working on a line about how I'm only one of many friends to witness ancient stones from England this week.

Yes, there were crowds.  Yes, it's annoying to watch people make coy faces and kick up one let while taking a selfie with a selfie stick, as if the point of the photo isn't Stonehenge but "look at how cute I am (in front of Stonehenge)!"  

None of that matters.  What matters is the freaking rocks.  How did they get there?  Who engineered them so they fit snugly on top of each other?  Who shaped them with notches like Legos?

And then consider the peaceful, spiritual elements of Stonehenge, because they're happening, despite the tourists.  Stand there and look really hard at the rocks.  Consider for a moment that someone built this thing in the middle of a field where nothing can grow.  Also note that there's a small highway running alongside Stonehenge, which means that a certain percentage of the population in England passes FREAKING STONEHENGE on their way to work every day.

Then, when you've had your fill, walk back to the visitors' center instead of taking the bus, because you might not be done walking through fields with cows and the sky might be partially filled with billowy, non-rain-threatening (for once) clouds, and you might be in the middle of a bunch of beautiful rolling fields that have weird burial mounds embedded in them every few hundred feet.  It's better than the bus and a good way to ensure you'll hit your 10,000 steps even while spending most of the day in a bus.

And then, if you've got the energy, you can sit with Phoenix and Sena (sp) and discuss the challenges and realities of calling yourself a man of faith, which will definitely help you work up enough of an appetite to enjoy lunch alfresco at the Talbot Inn in Mells, which is definitely not a tourist destination nor located in a town named after the diner Alice worked in but is instead the only restaurant in a tiny town still mostly owned by the Asquith family, which counts at least one former English Prime Minister among its progeny and has a decaying mansion that you can see from the graveyard next to the church. 

We did all of this.  We had a relaxing outdoor lunch with Phoenix, Sena and the Southwith family, and a bunch of bees, one of which met a terrible death when trapped him with a napkin after he flew into my beer.  That's the kind of sadist I am, apparently.

It was so great, after 43 days, when our tour led us into an off-the-beaten-path place like Mells, which had the Talbot Inn, a post office, the old medieval church that doubled as the burial place of a World War I-era English poet who Mr. Southwith had heard of and Phoenix quoted and a garden where we came later to have tea, offering me a chance a redemption when a second bee flew into my Coke.  I released him.

De la Mare's folly.

After Mells, we visited the very random Nunney Castle, built by Sir John De la Mare, who went to war in the mid-14th century and returned with a bag of cash and, clearly, an ego big enough to build himself his own McCastle.  "There's no reason why he built this moat," an obviously disgusted Phoenix explained, but there it was: an actual moat.  In 1645, some cannonballs took out De la Mare's folly.  Only a shell remains, impressive enough, at least, for a group of English teenagers also visiting to remark, "Can you imagine the parties they must've had here?"  Me, I was too busy imagining De la Mare's unimpressed 14th-century neighbors:  "Did you see what that idiot is doing now?  He's building a moat!"

The tour wrapped up in the aforementioned George's Inn, "serving beer continuously since 1397."  From there, Phoenix dropped us all at the Hilton.  The Southwith's walked back to their superior lodgings at the MacDonald Spa and Hotel and we went to explore Bath's Roman, well, baths.  

Dating back to 76 A.D., the baths were the hot spot (pun intended) for semi-ex-pat Romans

I'm assuming the water wasn't this
green in Roman times. 

(those living very far from Rome but still well within the boundaries of the empire) to meet, socialize, do some worshipping of various gods, make business deals and, as suggested by Bill Bryson, whose occasional commentary really livened up the headphone guide, "get into some business in the various nooks and niches" all around the baths.  We saw some columns, some brackish looking water, some impressive draining systems (engineering marvels being the calling card of today), a few examples of the petty curses Romans used to lob at each other (mostly because someone stole their cloak) and learned perhaps more about the every day life of a citizen of the city called "Aquae Sulis" by the Romans that I really had planned to learn today, like the reason why they separated the sexes in the second century: Emperor Hadrian (he of the wall) decided it wasn't cool to have naked Roman men and women cavorting together and getting fragrant oils rubbed on them in public.

What a day.  And then, plates smashed on the ground, three different kinds of Greek cheeses and a bottle of wine named after a second-tier Southern California theme park.  Than you, Phoenix, thank you Sema (I apologize for repeatedly misspelling your name), thank you Southworths and most of all, thank you, Bath, Stonehenge, Mells, Nunney and the town of Norton St. Philip for giving Sandra Bullock and I a final second (third? fourth?) wind to take us to sabbatical finish line.

Here are today's enigmatic numbers:

1 -- bee killed in sadistic fashion by me.  Sorry, bee.  At least you got to die drunk.

3 -- advanced degrees earned by Mr. Southworth, who once lived in San Francisco while directing a production of a Eugene O'Neill play at the A.C.T. and also was somehow involved in the production of the Christopher Walken film, "King of New York."

15,104 -- steps.  How we got that many is anyone's guess.

7 -- number of times I insisted loudly that aliens were responsible for creating Stonehenge.  Each time, Phoenix said, "That's no more outlandish than any of the other theories."

2 -- glasses of prosecco included in our Roman Baths admission, which led to a nice moment where I got to stand next to ancient Roman baths, looking up at a medieval skyline, with my arm around the girl of my dreams, which is not bad after 43 days.

9 -- years to the day since our boy had his bar mitzvah.  Happy bar mitzvah anniversary, Mr. Jawa.

Well, that's almost a wrap.  Tomorrow we take the train to Windsor, where we'll tour the palace, hopefully find a pub for dinner where we can finally eat jacketed potatoes and one more sticky toffee pudding, pack our stuff and set our alarms.  Re-entry looms.