I had booked a trip with Evan Evans tours for Windsor, Stonehenge, and Oxford. I had read where one reviewer had wrote that he had booked the Downton Abbey tour and was never picked up from his hotel and it ruined his life. I made sure to be at my hotels scheduled pick up about 20 minutes early.... just in case.
My pick up time came and went. The concierge walked by me on his way back to the hotel. I inquired about the tour and his only response was to come inside. Not happening dude. I waited another 10 minutes and then I say the giant Evans Evan bus. I waved and ran to it. The tour guides seemed bit shocked about my elation on making it on board. I took a seat and they dropped us off at Victoria station with our assigned gates. Our tour guide spoke Portuguese and then English. There was one family that spoke Spanish. She let us know how long we would have at each of our destinations.
She went into a lot more detail on the history of each of the places we were visited when she spoke in Spanish and I was thankful I could understand.
Our first stop was Windsor and I was a bit amazed that the inside looked so much like Versailles. We were not allowed to take any pictures of the inside of the buildings. There was another girl on the tour that was by herself and I quickly made friends with her. Her name was Natalie and she was from Toronto by way of Singapore.
Our next stop was Stonehenge and about two years a go you could park pretty close to the monuments. They had decided to move the parking to about a mile away. There are little audio guides they offer that go into the history and age of the burrows, grounds, and monuments. It was interesting to see these giant stones in person.
It was rainy this day as well and we really lucked out because there was only a drizzle at each of our destinations and a significant downpour as we loaded the bus. The English country side was beautiful.
Our last stop was Oxford university. There was a walking tour and I decided to peace out early with Natalie in search of Christ Church where they filmed the great hall in the Harry Potter movies. We made it a minute later to their last tour. A little heavy hearted we walked the streets of Oxford and checked out the campus. Natalie and I decided to have dinner together at a funky restaurant I saw on my tour. It's called Churchill Downs and looks lovely on the outside and has a bunch of cool funky things on the outside. Normally there is a long line for the restaurant but since it was a Tuesday night we were able to go right on end and snag one of the tables.
They were having the Rugby Championship in Britain and I got to see several Rugby players out and about on the streets of London. The big screen TV was showing the match that night of Fiji and Uruguay. After dinner we decided to walk back to our hotels since Natalie's was about three blocks closer than my hotel and in the same direction. It was about a 4 mile walk with intermittent rain. We were in the Notting Hill/Kingston Gardens area. There were a lot of night runners out on the street. I said goodbye to Natalie at her turnoff and then made it safely back to my hotel.
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