Stonehenge

​     After London I was going to visit an old exchange student who now lives in Bristol. I realized that Stonehenge was roughly en route and therefore could not pass up the opportunity to go and see it. 
     On the bus out of London I listened to all my London related music: There She Goes, which was what played in The Parent Trap when she arrives in London, and the soundtrack from Bend It Like Beckham. Urban sprawl slowly turned into the English countryside, and eventually I made it the Stonehenge visitor’s center. 
     Since I was in transit I had all of my stuff with me: a camera equipment backpack, and a small carry-on sized wheeled bag. Easy to manage, but still a bit of a strange sight. Luckily there was no prohibition on bags on the grounds, but there was no place to store them and I had to have them with me at all times. So I was the slightly hilarious person who walked with her luggage around Stonehenge.
     There is a historical exhibit at the visitor’s center which gives you context and a good base of what we know about Stonehenge and the surrounding earthworks. The site had many phases of construction which ranged from about 3000 BCE to 2000 BCE. It's believed to be a ritual or ceremonial site, and is surrounded by different burial mounds and earthworks. The stones also line up with the summer solstice sunrise, and the winter solstice sunset.
     I had heard so often from people that the stones weren't really that big and you couldn't get that close, and that really it was often a let down experience. So I went in with pretty low expectations and the mindset of getting to see some really interesting history. I was really pleasantly surprised then, because I found the stones pretty impressive, and at the end of the loop around the circle I felt like I still got to be quite close to the stones. It was really cool, and I was quite happy I had made the trek, even with all my stuff in tow.