A Trip Across the Pond : What's The Meaning of Stonehenge?

What's The Meaning of Stonehenge?

(Monday, October 28th, 2013)

If there's anybody out there who doesn't understand the title of this blog entry, you must immediately go to YouTube and search What's The Meaning of Stonehenge and listen to the song. It's from the same makers as What Does The Fox Say and every time Gabel and I go to Stonehenge now we always listen to that song first.

Anyways, as mentioned, when Gabel and I had been running around trying to recover my drivers license on our last night in London, it had been raining. Nothing extreme, just some rain. When I woke up the next morning at 7:30 it was a bit windy but by 830 it had calmed down and was nice and sunny out. I had arranged for the taxi service to pick Steph and I up at the hotel and then we swung on over to my dad's hotel and got him and Annette and Adam and we drove to Southampton. It was so exciting to be all together again and very neat to have everybody in my city. The traffic getting out of London was terrible though and I couldn't figure out what was going on. While stuck in the cab, I went on my phone to look up what train we needed to take to get to Stonehenge because I was bringing my family there that day. The website told me that all the trains that day were cancelled. I was stunned and didn't understand what was going on. I texted Gabel who had stayed behind in London to shop with her mom for that day and she notified me that she had just learned her train out of London was cancelled as well. She was stranded. Suddenly it hit me…

Everyone all weekend in London had been talking about "the storm of the century" which was to hit London and the south east coast. I would hardly call what happened in London a storm. Sunday night it had rained, which it does quite frequently, as it is England. That's what it does here! There had been some wind, but honestly nothing terrible. Upon further investigation it turned out that the "storm" was responsible for all the trains in the entire south half of the country being cancelled. Nothing was running.

I was dumbfounded. I wanted to send everybody to Canada to experience a REAL storm. The morning then became quite stressful for Gabel and myself since she needed to figure out alternate arrangements out of London and I needed to find an alternate way for my family to get from Southampton to Salisbury. We finally arrived in Southampton and went to the train station to see if we could get any updates and it was utter mayhem there. It was absolutely jam packed and I could see on the board right away that all the trains for the whole day were cancelled. Just peachy. I tried thinking of a backup plan for my family but they really wanted to go to Stonehenge so in the end we had to taxi there as well. It cost 65£ one way which mad me so sick because in total it was 130£ taxing to and from Salisbury when in reality we could have trained there for 40£ total return. So frustrating that the one time my family is here, the trains have to go down.

In the end we had a lot of fun at Stonehenge once we made it. We took lots of jumping pictures and Adam was obviously the best at it and I was the worst. The Stonehenge tour bus dropped us back off in Salisbury and we walked over to the Salisbury Cathedral which blew me away. It's one of the tallest cathedrals in England and it was never bombed during World War II because the Germans were under strict orders to leave in intact because it was their point of navigation for the south coast because it could be seen from so high up. The cathedral was built in the 1300's and I can't imagine how it was possible for humans to build anything so intricate, elaborate and massive back then. The stone carvings in the archways and the stained glass were particularly impressive but you can't even imagine all the detailing and colours. That was well worth the visit.

After Stonehenge I showed Annette the West Quay Mall in Southampton and she went crazy there haha. She got some clothes, I got a warm coat, Adam bought some shoes and a sweater, Steph got some souvenirs and my dad bought some cookies so it was a successful nighttime shopping trip all around!

Now this day was also Gabel's real birthday. So I had planned a little surprise party for her and we all collaborated to decorate the flat and we got her presents and then we went out for a surprise dinner at our favourite restaurant, Leelawadee (best Thai food in town and two minutes from our flat!). We had a good night drinking wine, eating cake, opening presents, and I just loved that Gabel and I had some of our family here combined to form such a happy group. It's perfect timing that everyone came on our week off and it makes me really happy that Gabel got to spend her birthday surrounded by lots of people. Cheers to 24 awesome years, Miss Bagel <3

To conclude, no we did not find the meaning of Stonehenge but that song is stuck in my head still.