William and Laume's adventures - Day Two

Today we took a tour bus called Mad Max Tours - the tour guide was great and we had a lot of fun. First we went to the village of Castle Combe - or is it spelled Coombe. Anyhoo, we had a special treat as they are filming a movie there so they had covered the asphalt to hide it and put up all sorts of props so not only was the village hundreds of years old, but it looked it. We had to get there early to see things before they starting filming at 10 am. The film crew even let us wander in to see some of the inside props for the movie. Cool, huh!

Next we went to Avesbury. Another cute little village and of course the stones. And sheep. People were having as much fun photographing the sheep as the stones. Our guide brought dowsing rods and told us about the water that ran under the ground around the stones. William was the first to use them and you should have seen the look on his face when they worked. I used them too and it looked like they weren't gonna work and then whoosh, they swung around.

We went to Lacock next - Lakock? Whichever way it's spelled, it was another charming village,this one with people milling about and living there. The school children all laughing and playing on the school grounds in their British school uniforms. The best part of this stop, however, was the Abbey where, in the cloisters, they filmed many scenes from the first and second Harry Potter films! It was tooooo cool! Unfotunately William was starting to run out of energy at this point, so I think I was more excited then he was. He was more interested in the pub we were going to eat lunch at, The George Inn, serving ale since the 1300's. We ate with one of the other tour members, a nice woman from Brazil traveling alone. I had been complaining about the exchange rate, a pound is worth almost two American dollars, until Maria told me the exchange rate for her was four to one!

Last but definitely not least. Stonehenge. Wow. Amazing. It was tooooo cool! Hmmmm, I seem to be repeating that phrase a lot. I took lots of photos, especially at Stonehenge. It's different then seeing photos of it - all up close and 3-D and with people and birds and sheep. Tooooo cool! You can't go up and touch the main stones (although you can see and touch some of the ones that are outside the main circle), but you get really close.

William is now resting at the B&B, figuring out which of the four channels he wants to watch on the telly, while I ran out to buy a piece of fabric at the quilt shop around the corner and came here to write my daily post to let hubby know what we're up to for the day. Yes, the first thing we ran into in England after checking in to the B&B yesterday was a quilt shop. We went in and - GASP - fabric costs a small fortune around here - anywhere from $12 to $20! That's American dollars. I guess if I lived in England I would have a considerably smaller fabric stash. So I'm only gonna buy a fat quarter just so I can say I put some fabric from England in a quilt. It was closed though for the night, I'll have to go back, perhaps tomorrow.

I'm getting used to the money. William is annoyed when I say dollar or penny instead of pound or pence. Although, the tour guide was calling a pound a dollar today, so maybe the terms are somewhat interchangeable. The hardest part to get used to is that pounds come in coin form. And they have twenty pence instead of instead of 25 cent quarters. The tour guide told me something was worth a quid and I asked what a quid was - he cracked up laughing - at himself, for assuming I'd know.

Everyone has been very nice when we don't know what we're doing. The area is saturated with tourists from all over the world. It certainly puts a different perspective on being an American - no big deal around here. Except it is indeed a small world - another couple on our tour today was also from California, and in fact lived not far from us.

Tonight we are going on a comedy tour of the streets of Bath, and we'll find someplace new to try for dinner. And tomorrow we're thinking of taking the bus to Glastonbury to see the Abbey and walk up the Tor.

Oops, my minutes are up, so see you later.