That pile of rocks

In all my excitement over sharing Hampton Court with our readers, I totally forgot about the rest of our day.  When we left Hampton Court to head for Bath, we passed right by Stonehenge, and figured we would stop and have a look around.  Initially, I was going to forgo a visit as I’ve heard that all the bloody tourists ruin the experience, but we did literally pass right by it (seriously, the motorway runs right next to it), so I figured we could have a look around. 

bloody tourists!

   

When we pulled up, I certainly feared that the tourists were going to be too much for me.  They were crawling all over like ants on a piece of candy.  Apparently, Stonehenge is on some master list of sites in England for Japanese tourists.  It looked like an invasion.  I’d like to think that the citizens of Oxford thought they were in Japan earlier on in the day since about 90% of them were wearing some article of clothing with the words OXFORD written on it.

Also,  the entry price was a bit extreme, but luckily we are members of English Heritage and neither had to pay the 7 pounds a piece nor wait in line with all the invaders and their cameras.   Luckily, the space around the actual site was wide enough to get around all the other tourists.  Also, they had the area around the actual site blocked off (too many idiot tourists climbing on and graffiting it) so you could easily get photos without random people in them.  This is my pet peeve and I will wait 10 minutes for a site to be clear of people when taking pictures.  It drives Kevin nuts but makes for better photos.

Hurray!  No tourists in my photo

In all, we spent about 10 minutes looking around (which is why the entry price is so ridiculous) before setting off for Bath once again.

 

We got into town just in time for dinner.  I am a huge foodie and also love Jamie Oliver so I was very excited that he had just opened a restaurant in Bath – Jamie’s Italian.  Jamie is a huge proponent of locally sourced fresh ingredients and good food at reasonable prices.  And good and reasonable it was.  We decided to start with bruschetta topped with fresh ricotta, heirloom tomatoes and basil which was delicious.  Kevin had a delicious Bucatini Carbonara, which featured tubular, hollow spaghetti type noodles with smoked pancetta, courgettes and parmesan.  After hearing that they had a special of squash risotto, I had to have that as it is one of my favorite dishes.  It certainly didn’t disappoint.  The squash was full of flavor, the risotto a perfect texture and seasoned with just the right amount of sage.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

We topped off our meals with a lemon polenta cake (me) and tiramisu (Kev).  The polenta cake was glorious and I am going to make it my mission to replicate it when I get home.  In all, a fabulous meal, but lets face it – it would have to be.