April 18, 2009

History rocks!!!

Ethan and Sam both have homework during our vacation (what kind of sadist does that to a kid?), including geography and history. But really what was cool today was our visit to a place Ethan had to write a report about earlier this year in 6th grade: Stonehenge.

The place itself it not terribly impressive. It's a bunch of rocks in the middle of this remote field next to a highway. It's ringed round by a rope barrier to keep us unwashed masses from fouling the ancient stones with our personal grime. (Actually, I think that's a good thing. Not because I'm personally grimy, mind you.)

The audio tour is a must, however. Here's a tip for the novice tourist: When picking up your audio tour handset, be sure not to get the Japanese version, unless of course you speak Japanese. The English version is much easier to understand. The audio tour could benefit from some wordcount reduction and could be spoken a bit faster, but if the rocks stood in one place for nearly 6,000 years, then the tourists can stand to listen to a few extra minutes of narrative. It's pretty good narrative, after all.

Not much else to say about Stonehenge, really. I enjoyed visiting it (again, as I had seen it on my 10th grade trip many years ago), and I'm glad we went even though it was an hour drive or so.

The one thing I wish I'd done before going down to Salisbury, though, is brush up on my Alfred the Great history and see if there were other sights to see regarding him. For some reason, I became terribly interested in his story about 20 years ago and read several books, and I'd have liked to visit a few of the interesting points if there were any. But I didn't.

Tomorrow: The Meet!





5 comments:

Aniket Thakkar said...

I lovve the Stonehenge and have promised myself to visit it in my lifetime. :D

I have the jigsaw puzzle model of Stonehenge at my work desk. Got that from Barnes and Nobles. :-D

With all the speculation of aliens having landed there and it possessing magical powers... I have to visit it. :-):-)

I like alien and magical stories a lott!

Great pics!

fairyhedgehog said...

Very nice pictures.

I went to Stonhenge in the olden days when you could go right up and touch the stones, so they have some of my grime on them.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

writtenwyrdd said...

I remember the little trip-hazard fence, but there wasn't a big 8' chain link monster when I was there in 1990! Wow. Times change things.

We had a tour guide who gave us dowsing rods that would spin in some people's hands while walking past the heelstone. Way cool. (They spun several times around for me, probably indicating my serious problems with direction finding.)

writtenwyrdd said...

Oh, you guys are actually meeting? I'm SO jealous.

Anonymous said...

So the rain stayed away - at least enough for the Stonehenge jaunt? The pics of the boys seem to show that they're having fun - hope you & the Mrs. are, too. SO so so so jealous about tomorrow. *sigh* I will be at work, shaping the immortal souls of children. But, you guys go ahead and have fun.....*sigh*