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!