Back in the UK

At the end of the cruise, we were among the first off the ship, taking luggage ourselves ashore then waiting for our tour bus to take us to London. First this took us to Stonehenge. I don't know what I expected of this ancient site. Perhaps I'd seen too many documentaries about it - the reality is a little more mundane than the imagination constructs. That's probably a good thing, now I can review the information with a better sense of how it fits into the ancient landscape. Next we went to Bath. I didn't know much about Bath, maybe how often it was referenced in Georgian literature. I didn't expect there to be ruins of the Roman baths nor there to be a whole below ground museum. Also, I'd probably assumed the "Georgian bit" was just a few blocks, when in fact it is most of a sizeable town for the time. Our final en-route stop was Windsor Castle. After visiting so many palaces and churches throughout the Baltic it was quite fitting to then include some of the majesty of Britain and to compare the English style to the rest. As ever, these viewings are a reminder of the great power that a nation had been in the past. Windsor is only one of many palaces here, so we weren't seeing the peak but even so and despite the relative restraint of English style it was clear that here had been an empire of scale beyond the others. The St George's Chapel in being the entombment place of many monarchs was comparable to some of the others we'd seen, with the extra side chapels for that purpose. Also, as in Stockholm there were metal plates representing nobles who would have been buried elsewhere. Also there were some nobles there of whom time has dimmed the importance that they must have had in their day in order to be placed there. It was clear in several ways but notably by the memorial presence that the church dates from the time of Edward IV. Once inside the castle we went straight to the chapel as it would be first to close. From there we went into the State Apartments, which were equivalent to those we'd seen in the Baltic. Their style was yet again different in subtle ways. For example the ceilings had a shape altogether different (a two step effect) but the ornamentation with gilding was very similar. There were also much more expansive than they seem from the outside, the rooms being larger and more numerous than seems possible from the outside. After a quick wander through the new shops of Windsor the town, it was back on the coach to finally head into London. On the way we dropped off some people to hotels near Heathrow airport. It was an eye opener to realise how large and how many of these there are. After all they're not near anything else. Then it was into London to drop people at London hotels. As this involved some convoluted streets, which involved impressive coach maneuvering in narrow streets, we got to see quite a few notable spots (Sloane Square, Notting Hill etc). We were split off into a different bus for the final leg - supposed to be a mini-bus but turned out to be a full sized coach. This proved comical when it came to us as the last drop and our street eluded the driver's GPS, was closed at one end by building works and was too narrow for the huge coach. And it was raining. When we trundled from the end of the street the key was found as advised and we were in.