Boston Apartment (Mar 20, 2009)

I have been wanting to write this post for a while now, but something or the other keeps on coming up. Two days went by in recovering from the after effects of jet lag and two more from St Patrick’s Day. Ah life!

Getting back to London – Saturday was the day I had booked myself for a trip on Evan Evans Tours on their package tour to Windsor, Stonehenge and Oxford.

AT 44GBP it was a good bargain although the entry to the attractions was not included. Windsor Castle was 14 GBP and Stonehenge at 7GBP. First stop was at Windsor where I was able to spend around 2 hours roaming around. Also the changing of the guards happens here at 11 am and there was a good crowd to watch it. This castle is very near Heathrow Airport and even if you cannot make it into London City between stopovers, the castle is worth a visit.

Stonehenge was a stop for 45 minutes and as our guide said: this was more than enough time. The place was cold with only these mysterious stones and nothing but grass mounds and sheep around. Stonehenge is not a place if you are not historically inclined (This for you will be a place with stones standing atop each other – what crap!). If you are interested in how these stones came to be from around 10000 years ago, how they were brought here and built then you will relish the site.

Finally, we had a 2 hour drive to Oxford – the city of the dreamy spires. Our guide took us on a walking tour which was interesting. Even if you are visiting on your own there is a good walking tour and it is cheap. Oxford has to be experienced on foot, with its beautiful colleges, narrow romantic streets and a pleasant college crowd.

Fans of Harry Potter will have a field day here looking around the various places where the movie was shot and the book was sort of based on.

Finally a 2 hour trip took me back to London. The trip lasted from 9 in the morning to 7 in the evening, which is a bit short, but covering 3 places in such a small budget can’t get better. If you want to see these 3 places and want to do it in a hurry, this is a good tour.

I met up with Ali later on in the night and headed to Leicester square again and onward to Covenant Garden which has quite a few pubs. He had to work the next day – so we weren’t out till very late, but that was fine with me as my eyes were red with tiredness and now I was only looking forward to crash in my bed at home in the US.