stonehenge and salisbury

A colleague and I took the 1.5 hour train ride to Salisbury yesterday, a cathedral town west of London. Salisbury is a small town of about 50,000 people, and like all small towns around here, has an interesting mix of shops and restaurant in and around the high (main) street. Part of our purpose in coming to Salisbury was to go to nearby Stonehenge. While we were waiting for the bus to go there, we started walking around town a bit. Here are our first glimpses of the town.









You'll notice that it was sunny. This was the first time I'd seen the sun since I landed in the UK. The weather has been typically British (i.e., cloudy and rainy), so we got really lucky with the weather.

Stonehenge is about ten miles from Salisbury. The ride there was a fairly quick one, in which we passed by Old Sarum, the original location of the town and cathedral, and lots of pretty countryside, full of farms and trees changing colors. There were also cows and sheep grazing near Stonehenge.



You cannot get that close to Stonehenge; you walk in a circle around it. You get an audio tour with admission, but I never take advantage of such offers. I prefer to make my own judgments about things and listen to the people around. Although Salisbury is not close to London, the tourists at Stonehenge were surprisingly international, and I heard all sorts of languages and accents.

Stonehenge as I first saw it:


Stonehenge is impressive for its size, particularly when you consider how long ago it was constructed. By whom remains a mystery. Many people believe it was the Druids, but Stonehenge is far too old to have been built by them.



It was windy and generally a good day to watch the weather change. This made for a lot of fun taking photos.









It would have been nice to get closer, but I don't think my conclusions about Stonehenge would have been any different from other angles or additional proximity. Ultimately, Stonehenge is just a bunch of big rocks organized in an astronomically significant fashion. If you go with that expectation, you'll enjoy it. If you go expecting something more, prepare yourself for crushing disappointment.

We spent an hour at Stonehenge and then took the bus back to town. Our next destination was the cathedral. Some photos from the walk to the cathedral:





Salisbury cathedral is smaller than others I've visited here. It's no Westminster Abbey or York Minster, but it's still an impressive piece of architecture, and its surroundings are very pleasant.





The inside of the cathedral is typically gothic:





One of my favorite things inside the cathedral was a reflecting fountain located near the back of the cathedral. Looking into the fountain from different angles provided mirror-like reflections of the cathedral's various features. Very cool.







Various pieces of modern sculpture were on display inside, and for reasons that I cannot explain. They seemed entirely out of place in this medieval structure, but the juxtaposition of the art and architecture could make for some interesting photos.



This cathedral also had the coolest stained glass I've ever seen in the front, behind where priests would deliver sermons. I've never seen dark blue like this in stained glass.



One other interesting thing that this cathedral has is one of the four remaining original copies of the Magna Carta, produced in 1215. Pictures were not permitted, unfortunately. I would have liked to have gotten a close-up of that.

The weather had been pretty overcast when we went in, but the clouds broke right as we came out of the Magna Carta section. It made for great scenery in the courtyard and outside of the cathedral.











The cathedral was well worth visiting, and I'm glad I went.

We continued wandering around for town a bit. It has many interesting homes and businesses with character. I liked this house in particular:





More of the town:





By the time we were done with the cathedral, it was past 3pm, so we searched for a place to eat and settled on a pub. I don't think I'll ever be a huge fan of such places, but I certainly like them better here than in the US. People seem more casual here than in the US with drinking and pub/bar life, and it just seems like a regular part of life here, where everyone neighborhood has at least one small one. This one was older and had a lot of character, with its wood paneling and older furnishings. I had a lunch of cottage pie (ground beef, mashed potatoes and sauce) and cheese fries, and it was simple but good. We sat in there for two or three hours, my colleague with her beers and I with my "lemonades" (like Sprite). It's actually a decent way to spend an afternoon since people can't smoke inside.

It started raining right after we left, so we quickly walked through town, trying to find the train station. We got lost, but that meant that we ended up walking along a river we found, which was filled with more brightly colored ducks and beautiful white swans. No pictures to show you, though--it was too dark for photos. We eventually found the train station, and 20 minutes later we were on our way back to London.

It was a good Saturday.

Galapagos: Puerto Ayora

At long last, I've come to the end of our Galapagos trip, and for those of you who thought that the islands were completely dry and deserty, your notions are about to be changed.

Puerto Ayora is the largest town in the islands and is on the island of Santa Cruz. I don't have exact figures, but I would estimate the population to be around 10,000 people. It had a very touristy vibe to it, as you might expect. There were small shops and restaurants everywhere, and all sorts of souvenirs, t-shirts and the like could be found on and around the main drag in town.

Ships in the harbor:



Our first stop was Darwin Station, which is the main wildlife research institution in the island. Much, if not most of the work done at the station is for giant land tortoises. Lonesome George, who is the last of his particular subspecies, is kept at Darwin Station.

Lonesome George:



I prefer to see animals in their natural habitat, so the station didn't do much for me. This was our first opportunity to see the REALLY big tortoises, however, so that was interesting, if nothing else.

One of the saddleback variety (you can tell because of the "saddle grip" near his neck):



Having Becca next to one of the tortoises gives you a bit of perspective on their size. This one isn't even that big, either.



When we were done at the station, we cruised around town for a while, stopping to look at souvenirs and to get online, which we hadn't done for almost a week. Not surprisingly, very little had happened and we hadn't missed anything.

One of the more entertaining things we saw in town was the fish market. The local animals have figured out that this is an easy meal, so they show up for free handouts. The people working in the market don't seem to mind and made no attempt to get rid of the animals and birds. Check out the video.



We went back to the ship for lunch. In the afternoon, we were taken by bus to a "ranch" some 20-30 minutes outside of town. The land looked like it had been cleared a bit, but it wasn't cultivated or anything. Those lumps out there are giant land tortoises:



There were land tortoises everywhere at this ranch. When we had previously seen them, they were solitary--we'd never seen more than one at a time in the wild. Here, however, we saw more than a dozen of them, sitting, eating and wandering around. They don't appear to interact much, and they don't do much more than sit, eat and wander around a bit. They're extremely slow creatures, and it makes you wonder how it is that evolution favored their gigantic size over other features like speed and agility.

















We were also able to see the local duck variety while we were there, which was good as this was one of the few types of wildlife that we were supposed to see on this trip and hadn't see up to this point in time.





Duck size vs. tortoise size:



Becca size vs. tortoise size:



We went down into a lava tube, but unfortunately didn't see the owl that other people saw.



I previously mentioned that what you'd see here was not at all like the dry, desert conditions of most of our previous stops. From all the grass and greenery, you can see that. There were a few flowers in all that greenery, too.



I suppose it's only appropriate to end a vacation with a sunset photo. This was the only day that I remembered to go above deck to get one. The other days, we had been too busy relaxing in our room, recuperating from whatever we had done that day.



If you've been following my entries, you've seen how amazing this vacation was. It's not for everyone, but if you like wildlife or photography, or just want to go somewhere totally different, the Galapagos Islands are definitely for you. We had a great time and are glad we chose to do it. We waffled on this one for a long time because it was so expensive, but in the end, we felt like we made the right decision. Our timing was good, too. If you follow the news at all, you probably saw that there was an attempted military coup a few weeks after we left Ecuador. This all took place in and around places we had been.

Anyway, enjoy...