But It's Just a Bunch of Rocks...???

Stonehenge gets my vote as the most underwhelming attraction I've been to so far. Quite frankly unless you want to know some random information via the audio tour you can definitely skimp on the entry fee and just take photos through the fence. Frankly I expected so much more from a monumental engineering wonder that has inspired hundreds of writers and been the subject of so much speculation and debate.

Maybe if I took off all my clothes and ran around Stonehenge naked it might provoke more interest...

...or maybe if there simply weren't constant buses disgorging loads of ignorant tourists onto the site. If I hear one more person call Stonehenge one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World... grr...

However I don't think my trip out to Salisbury to see Stonehenge was wasted at all.
St Mary's Cathedral at Salisbury is simply awesome. Not only are the walls decorated with a multitude of statues of saints '(all unique) but there are also the Grotesque heads contorted in the most anguished expressions I've ever seen (see picture gallery). Luckily I delight in such things. I was also privileged enough to be there when the local school children's choir was performing so I got to see all this to a soundtrack of delightfully cherubic voices. (For those of you wondering, that was NOT sarcastic) Oh, and Salisbury Cathedral also has the most well preserved copy of the Magna Carta existing. That was pretty exciting - I was all "this is the beginning of the rule of law". Ahhh, my HPL lecturer would be proud... :p (For the unenlightened, ie non-Melbourne Law students, HPL = History & Philosophy of Law, you learn about Mabo and the rule of law in it)

I also stopped by Old Sarum on the way back to Salisbury from Stonehenge. Old Sarum is the ruins of a castle built by William the Conquerer. These battered stone walls are set atop a huge hill in the most tranquil and lush English countryside imaginable. And, because to the unimaginative person a bunch of rocks which don't even make a wall are indescribably boring, the place was largely devoid of snap-happy tourists so I got to sit in peace atop a ruined wall surrounded by nothing but endless green and sunshine and the occassional bird chirp and write in my journal and ponder what will become of OUR modern metropolises (is that the correct plural? Maybe metropolii?) after we are all returned to dust... ahh, such is bliss...

(PS: The reason that my photo looks stretched and pixelated is because I tried to increase its size to make the rocks look more impressive but apparently eblogger doesn't like that :p - maybe I should switch to LiveJournal to make Lil happy... :p)