A couple of our good friends from Houston visited us over the last weekend. Tanya and Darin are our neighbors in Texas and it was fun to see some friendly Texan faces.
We had a big time exploring bits of London that we hadn’t yet seen. We hit the Winston Churchill War Rooms museum for a start. Those of you who know me very well know that history isn’t my first love. Or second. Or really any part of like. Much more into science and maths, I feel anything that happened before about 1950 seems too long ago to worry much about. (Yes, I know the adage about history repeating itself, but it doesn’t remove the boredom associated with knowing about it.)
The War rooms were actually fairly interesting. Even for me. That says something, folks.
We took a little hop-on, hop-off bus in order to score some good pictures for another friend’s from Houston Flat Stanley project. Additionally that weekend, we were able to make it to another rugby game at the local fields.
The highlight of the weekend (aside from the company) was the day trip we took to Stonehenge and Bath. Stonehenge is believed to have been constructed before 1500 BC. The older it is to me, the less time/attention I have for it. So we walked out to see it, snapped a picture, and then waited for Tanya and Darin to finish up. It was unseasonly cold and rainy so Scott was happy to wait in the car with me!
We then drove on to Bath where we walked around the very old and beautiful town. The Abbey church was a beautiful building, but the center part of the town was the Roman Baths. The baths are built around a naturally forming hot springs. The water is at a constant 35 degrees Celsius. It really was amazing how something so elaborate could have been built so long ago. The Romans even used the heat from the water rising up to heat the rooms of the structures. Even for this low-level history interest, it was something to be seen. The cold beer at the pub when we finished was equally entertaining.
Tanya and Darin went on to tour Scotland and will be returning to Texas tomorrow. We wish them safe travels!
UPDATE: Just as I was about to post this – I realized that somehow I managed to exclude the true best part of their visit! On Saturday afternoon, we set out to go to St Paul’s Cathedral. Perhaps not surprisingly, we were distracted with a quick stop at a very cool old pub. This lead us to abort the plan to go to St Paul’s and instead do a pub crawl in order to get a free t-shirt. We are still missing one pub stop which Scott and I will “force” ourselves to go to, so that we can send Darin his t-shirt!
The video highlights: