London – Day 2
Before we start on day 2, we forgot something from Day 1! In the evening of our first day in London, we paid a quick visit to Big Ben (more properly, Elizabeth Tower). It was a great site to see.
Big Ben is quite an awesome place. It is connected to the Houses of Parliament. Unfortunately, tours of the inside of Big Ben are not available to American tourists. Oh well, it is still amazing from the outside!
Near Big Ben, is the London Eye. The London Eye is a huge ferris wheel which takes about 30 minutes to go around. It is owned by Coca-cola and is one of the only places in England that you can buy Dr. Pepper!
A sad note about the photo above is the large, metal fence between the road and the sidewalk. Last time we were in the UK, this fence was not there. Sadly, because of recent tragic events on this roadway involving vehicles driving onto the sidewalk, this fence became necessary for pedestrian safety.
Day 2
Ok, back to day 2. We went to Stonehenge today!
Last time we went to Stonehenge, we took a tour bus from London. The tour, operated by Evan Evans tours, was great at the time. The one thing that we didn’t love about it was that you only get 90 minutes total on site. That means that you have to get from the parking lot, to Stonehenge (about a mile), visit, and get back to the bus in that short timeframe. There is a shuttle that takes you from the parking lot to Stonehenge, but you have to wait in lines usually, and that eats up quite a bit of time as well.
This time, we thought we would give ourselves some more time at Stonehenge. The only cost effective way to do that for this trip was to rent a car. Now, as you probably know already, everybody in England drives on the left hand side of the road. I was pretty terrified of trying it out, but Jeremy was willing and excited to try it out. Luckily, we were able to secure an Automatic car, and not the typical Standard car driven there, or that would have been another thing to stress about while driving on the left!
This one was taken while we were stopped, so don’t worry, we were being safe!
After a little over an hour, we finally got to our destination! We would have gotten there sooner if it weren’t for variable speed limits, and speed cameras! Apparently speed cameras are quite a big deal in England. They are everywhere! They are not regular cameras either, they work by scanning plates at specific points on the road and then comparing the scan times with other cameras. They use that data to determine an average speed over the distance driven. You don’t have any idea which two cameras are going to link up and compare their data, so you have to follow the speed limit the whole time.
Ok, back to Stonehenge…
So, there is a story about why I look so ridiculous… You may have noticed that I am wearing both a beanie, and a baseball cap… Well, I didn’t realize it would be so cold that day, so I just brought a baseball cap. Upon getting to the gift shop, we realized that a beanie would make the day so much nicer. So, Jeremy and I bought beanies, and I was stuck carrying my baseball cap around as well. It was a long walk back to the car, so I slapped it on top of the beanie, and forgot how silly it looked!
Stonehenge was a great success! Driving, although very different than in the United States, was not too bad.
Want to know what you need to bring on a trip like this? Check out our packing list.