(Note: This blog post contains events from September 2023. For a more recent and up-to-date record of my adventures, check out my Instagram, @arielaonthego.)

We last left off still in England, and in that post I said I would tell you about what I think is the *ultimate* England tour. So this post is England in one day!

Stonehenge, Bath, and Stratford (the birthplace of William Shakespeare).
The perfect tour if you want to see all of England’s main attractions in just one day, but there are many, many other tours and it really depends on what you want to see.
It rains in England a lot.
Just about every day that we were there, it rained. Our tour guide said that going to Stonehenge in the rain is “part of the experience”.
I thought it was really cool to see… uh…
giant rocks.

Honestly, when you think about it, we drove all that way, and people come from all around the world just to see some giant rocks….

The sci-fi author in me thinks aliens built Stonehenge.

Like anyone else, our Stonehenge experience was cold, wet, and rainy. High winds, and clouds certainly made it an “experience”, and it’s definitely not a good idea to have an umbrella, because it would break and get swept away. I think that goes for most of England, actually. They don’t seem to really carry umbrellas all that much compared to other parts of the world. At least from my observations.

Stonehenge was really neat, it was interesting to see the history, what experts think could have happened, and how Stonehenge evolved over the years. So many different people and people groups that contributed to it, changing it so much over the years. I definitely think that it’s worth visiting especially if you are going to go to England. Stonehenge is Stonehenge. You have to visit, it’s as simple as that.

I suppose Stonehenge will just remain one of humanity’s greatest mysteries.

Our next step on our tour was Bath. You’ll never guess why the city is called, Bath. It’s because they have old Roman Baths there. Epic.
According to Wikipedia it was built around 60 to 70 AD as both a bath house and a place of worship for the Romans. It’s also home to a temple to one of the Roman gods, and the baths were built over a natural hotspring that is still flowing today.

Unfortunately, our tour guide said that in October 1978, a girl swimming in the Roman Bath contracted naegleriasis (a very rare and fatal brain infection) and died. Due to the contaminated water the baths are not open to the public for bathing, however, there are other places that you can go to where the water IS safe for bathing.

Bath was also rainy and wet, but it was also very pretty! Such a beautiful city with so many pretty things. We were recommended a tea at Hands Georgian Tearoom, so we decided to go for some tea and scones. It really wouldn’t be a proper trip to England without tea and scones. I love tea. I love scones. I love walking into a tea house in the cold rain and sitting down for some clotted cream and hot tea. Now I’m making myself hungry… and probably you too. I’m sorry.

The tea room we went to is called the Hands Georgian Tearoom, and it is just a stone’s throw away from the Roman Baths and Bath Abbey. This tearoom used to be the Hands Diary, a business founded by Charles Hands, selling dairy products like clotted cream. So, you can bet that this tea place has clotted cream. Oh, how I love British tea parties. Oh, how I love clotted cream. I can’t recommend going to Britain and getting tea with a scone and clotted cream highly enough.

(Lol how many times did I say clotted cream)

Other than having tea, we walked around a little bit more and took a few (a lot) of pictures, and we did not go into the Roman Baths. We only had a short time in Bath, and it was really either go walk around and explore, or see the Roman Bath.

When you arrived in Bath, you will not miss Bath Abbey in the middle of the tourist area. It was built between 1499 to 1611. The first coronation of the British monarch was held in Bath Abbey. King Edgar (Edgar the Peaceful), he would rule from October 959 until his death in 975. Sadly, it was closed when we visited so we’re not able to go in. We just admired how beautiful the cathedral is from the outside.

We also went to the market in Bath, because of course my mother could not leave without buying some tea!

One famous Bath resident is Jane Austen, I’m sure you’ve heard of her, she’s the author of Pride and Prejudice. Although I haven’t yet read Pride and Prejudice (shocking, I know… should I read it?) I think it’s cool that Jane Austin lived there for quite sometime. She wrote two of her novels, ‘Northanger Abbey’ and ‘Persuasion’ during her time in Bath.

We weren’t able to go and visit the Jane Austin Centre due to being short on time, but you can dress up like Jane Austin and have afternoon tea! That sounds like fun, and if any of you have been there, I would love to know what it was like!

While we were waiting for the tour bus to pick us up, I found a beautiful bookstore! (I’m always on the hunt for a good bookstore). This bookstore had ladders that you could actually climb on. I was very happy about that. There were soooooo many books. I wish that we could have spent longer in there.

After seeing the sights in Bath, we went to the home and birthplace of Sir William Shakespeare, and I believe that this was the highlight of the tour. I think it was marketed as a Shakespeare tour. My parents booked it mainly because we wanted to see Stonehenge, but Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon (haha, funny name) were nice additions!

Stratford was pretty nice, it looked like a step back in time with all the houses in that Tudor style. I think the Tudor style is nice. I think the beams look pretty cool laid across the house like that.

With our tour, we were able to go immediately inside, and that was great because we didn’t need to wait in line for anything. Everything being pre-booked was very convenient, and skipping all the lines was great.
First stop was where Shakespeare was born.

The tour included both his birthplace/house and his school, and we were treated to a little history lesson on both Shakespeare and the history of that time period. I learned that his school was an all-boys school, and that Shakespeare only spent his elementary years. We were also able to try writing with a quill and pen, just like what they would have used in real lessons back in the days!

It was all very neat to see the beginnings of one of the most well-known writers of all time!

Our tour ended after Stratford, and it was a long rainy day, but it was an awesome day. From Stratford it was a two hour drive back to London. A pretty good way to see some of England’s most popular attractions that are outside of London for one day!
Speaking of London, apart from my last post we didn’t do a whole lot in London. We’ve been to London before, right, so we didn’t need to see the Big Ben or the London Eye (we went on that when I was 4), so we were pretty much done in London.

Then began our trip to Southampton the next day.

The next morning, we took an hour train ride to Southampton. When we arrived in Southampton, we took a short taxi ride to our hotel and then we explored the city. We went to Sea City Museum and spent the day wandering in the nearby mall.

I found the museum really educational, there wasn’t a whole lot of *new* stuff that I learned because I’m already very familiar with the Titanic and it’s history, but it was really interactive, and there were a lot of videos, pictures, recordings, y’know, museum stuff. I was also very intrigued to learn that most of the crew on the Titanic was from Southampton, hence the museum being located there. So many lives lost. I would definitely recommend taking a visit to the museum to remember the Titanic, and learn about the events the took place.

So I did mention that Southampton was a good place to spend the night, and if you’re familiar with Southampton, you might also be familiar with the fact that many cruise ships sail from there including the Titanic in it’s maiden voyage in 10th of April 1912.

So.
Yes.
We went on a cruise! (A bit ironic that we went a museum dedicated to the Titanic’s history, before going on a cruise of our own…)
A cruise to where, you might ask?
Well, this is a cruise to all of the capitals of Europe and Scandinavia. I will be sure to write a lot about all of it.!

I really hoped that you enjoyed this post! Stay tuned for more!