"Dude, We're in a frickin field!!"

So I'm still totally floored by how utterly awesome today was (or should I say "udderly awesome"...teeheehee...you shall see why).
This is Shiri by the way.

So we started the day off with a beautiful breakfast provided by the hostel. It was our first real breakfast of the whole trip so it was absolutely lovely (we only ate cereal, but the fact that there were other options made it very exciting, and I finally got that glass of orange juice I had been craving for about 5 days).

We headed down to the bus station to get a day pass for the surrounding sights, including Stonehenge and Old Sarum. We were unaware that we were actually purchasing a full on tour with a special bus and narrated tour during the drive to Stonehenge. So that was cool. Stonehenge itself was amazing--it's crazy to try and imagine people over 7,000 years ago creating these massive stone structures with little or no technology whatsoever. It was definitely very impressive. And we made some friends: these kids on a People to People trip were trying and take one of those "perspective pictures" and they were really funny. We chuckled at them. And with them.

After walking around Stonehenge for a while (those of you in AP English will appreciate that I looked for Laurence Olivier dressed as King Lear but was unable to find him mingling about the stones--sorry), we headed to the visitors center to find out what kind of footpaths we could wander around on to some of the other sights in the area (other stone circles, burial mounds, etc.). We managed to find a footpath and headed out on it only to find that it led us straight through a fence into a field were a bunch of cows were grazing. We were slightly confused but did what any other experienced hiker does--follow the trail no matter what. And the rest is history, we ended up wandering through field after field, occasionally spotting information plaques along the way reminding us that we were on the right track, frolicking with the cows and sheep grazing in the field. It goes without saying, I was so excited and giddy I didn't even know what to do with myself. We definitely took lots of pictures.

Without meaning to, we ended up taking the 2.5 hour loop around this thing called the ancient Cersus. We were never able to figure out what that actually was. But it was a lovely walk. We spent most of it feeling a mixture of uneasiness ("are we really supposed to be wandering through this pasture?"), fright ("that cow is mooing and glaring at us with a vengeance"), and excitement ("dude, we're in a frickin field!"). We passed the time singing songs (old Sonrise Island and Wee Sing songs) and Michal asking me questions I didn't want to answer (for the record, If i had to have 3 living people and 3 dead people to dinner they would be: Barack Obama, Christian Bale, Alan Shearer, William Shakespeare, JFK, and Jesus. Michal's would be: Hugh Laurie, Bill Bryson, Michael Owen, Henry VIII, Claudius, Laura Ingalls Wilder).

Several hours later, we arrived back at the Stonehenge visitors center and ate some delicious and well-deserved ice cream. We then took the tour bus to Old Serum which is the remains of the old castle that was built by William the Conqueror's son in the 10th century. It's up on a hill which was really cool and there's very little left of it so you can see the layout of all the rooms and everything. Michal pointed out that it reminds her of Masada and I have to agree. It's basically Masada but with gray walls instead of brownish yellow and green grass everywhere instead of dirt. Oh, and you only climb for about 5 minutes as opposed to 105.

After a quick look around Old Serum we headed to the Salisbury Cathedral and looked through there for a bit. It wasn't as intricate and exciting as the Winchester Cathedral but it did have one of the only surviving copies of the Magna Carta on display which was really really cool. We also learned that the reason Salisbury was never bombed during WWII is because the Germans used the Cathedral as a marker so they didn't want to destroy it. They would fly over England, locate the cathedral, and then use that as a reference point for bombing other things. So note to self, if you don't want to be bombed, build a huge church in your town.

Anyway, today was definitely one of the best of the trip. We had absolutely gorgeous weather which we were worried about since yesterday so rainy and cold. Tomorrow we're off to Bath, so we'll see you all later!