As we leave Cardiff this morning, we are beginning our final day of touring. Our colds are getting a little better, hopefully they will be mostly gone by the time we get home. As we bid farewell to Wales, I wish we had been able to see more. Cardiff was a surprise, what a great city!

Before we knew it, we were back across the border in England, heading back to London having done a full circle around the British Isles, except for Northern Ireland. Our first stop upon returning to England is the city of Bath. Bath is a city of about 100,000 people and is one of those cities that seem untouched by time. The city center is much like it would have looked back in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, but Bath’s big claim to fame is the ancient Roman Baths, where the city got its name.

The Roman Baths, called Aquiae Sulis the Romans in Latin was originally built around 60AD, in the 1^st century, and remained in use until the 5^th century when the Romans were defeated. They fell into ruins, and were then rediscovered in the 18^th century where it was restored to some of its former glory and became a tourist destination. Most of the current buildings are from the 18^th and 19^th century, but in the areas below, some of the original foundations cam still be seen. The baths were fed by an underground hot spring, so the waters were warm and were supposed to have healing properties. It reminded us of our visit on our motorcycle trip back in 2015 to Hot Springs, Arkansas which also had public baths fed with hot spring water that had healing properties.

We had plenty of time to visit the site and see some of the ancient artifacts. We also used some of our time to explore the city, but it was a Sunday morning, and a lot of the shops were closed. There is also an Anglican church in the center of town called The Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul, but its commonly known as Bath Abbey. It was founded in the 7^th century and rebuilt several times, especially in the 12^th, 16^th, and 19^th centuries. We would like to have looked inside, but it was Sunday morning and there were actual services being performed. We did get a quick peek at the inside when they opened the front doors to let the parishioners out at the end of service.

We were unable to find any good Bath t-shirts, but we were also an another mission, to find a Pharmacy and get some Sudafed for our colds. We did find what we thought was Sudafed last night in Cardiff, but we bought it in a grocery store so it was that fake kind of Sudafed that was taken off the market in the US for being ineffective. Real Sudafed is only sold in Pharmacies and is kept behind the counter. Lucky for us, we found a Boots pharmacy that opened at 10:30AM on Sundays, so we wandered around town until 10:30 and scored some real Sudafed.

Soon it was time to get back on the bus to head to our final tourist stop in Stonehenge. We were unsure what to expect, as we had both seen all kinds of reviews of Stonehenge over the years. I remember reading that is much smaller than expected, or that it was just a pile of rocks out in a field. The truth is that it is just a pile of rocks out in a field, but the rocks are massive, and it certainly impressed me as to how they could have been constructed back in about 3000BC.

There is a visitor center that has all kinds of details of the findings at the site, but the truth is that no one really knows the original purpose of the site as there are no records dating back that far in the past. Over the years it has suffered some deterioration through time, weather, and tourists. But starting at the beginning of the 20th century, serious efforts were made to stabilize the stones and to put things back the way they were originally.

Im not sure why the visitors center is so far away from the actual site, but they have a shuttle bus scheme that takes visitors out to the site and returns them to the visitor center with a bus leaving ever 5 minutes. Once out at the site, the stones are roped off, but you can get reasonably close to get some good pictures. The whole deal took about 30 minutes, and we were back in the gift shop looking for t-shirts. This time we were lucky and scored a couple of t-shirts and a magnet.

By now it was time to get back on the bus for our final stop, back where we started at the Clermont Victoria Hotel in London. The distance wasn’t very far, but I followed our progress on my phone, and realized that when we were about 10 miles from the hotel, the Maps App showed our estimated time of arrival at one hour. It actually took more like an hour and a half. London does not have a main artery running into the center of the city, and London traffic is terrible. No wonder people use the Tube or walk everywhere!

We finally arrived back at the hotel at around 4:00PM and were relieved to settle in to our final night in London. But before we settle in for the night, we wanted to make one last trip across from the hotel to Shakespeare’s Pub and get our final Fish ‘n Chips before we leave. Little did we know it was football night in the pub with England playing Slovakia. The place was packed! Just as we were about to leave, I spotted Carole and Gary from our group sitting at a table for four with two empty seats. We asked to join them and found ourselves seated with a couple of our favorite people from this trip. They had just come in for a drink, and were getting ready to leave when our food came. They are normal people from Canada who eat later, it is us who are old people from Florida that eat dinner before 5:00PM.

They left about 5:00PM just about when the game was starting. That was when the pub started getting rowdy. When they played the English National Anthem, the entire pub broke into God Save the Queen. By now the smokers from outside were making their way inside and the place was really getting packed. We decided that was our cue to leave and headed back to the hotel for a good night’s rest before our flights tomorrow.

Luckily our flight is not until 1:40PM so Insight Vacations is providing a private car for free to drive us to the airport that will pick us up in the lobby at 9:45AM. We can finally sleep late! Looking back over the last few weeks, it was really a great trip. Insight Vacations always does a great job and Cam was a great Tour Guide. The bus was comfortable, the rooms and the food were great, and we got to see a lot in such a short time. In retrospect, we should probably have split the tour into two. We covered a lot of ground in what was essentially two weeks and could probably seen more at a slower pace. This was the largest tour group we have ever had at the maximum of 37, and it didn’t seem to be a problem, our previous tours were typically 28-32 people. But our fellow passengers were great, everyone was always on time, nobody complained, and everyone seemed to get along great. We will definitely be travelling with Insight Vacations again!

We are not sure where we are going next year, we are thinking about maybe Eastern Europe, meanwhile it’s back to reality tomorrow and rotator cuff surgery on the 9^th. It’s all part of the adventure!