Tuesday, February 27th. Stonehenge and Bath. When Arthur woke us up at 1am last night, we felt refreshed. Perhaps it was because we didn’t sleep throughout the flight. Or we were just used to the lack of sleep. Nevertheless, we were glad to have gotten at least 4 hours of continuous sleep. After we got Arthur back to sleep, he woke us up again at 3:30 and then at 6.
By 6am, we thought we might as well get ready to go out. Sean went to go take a shower while I fed Arthur. When he was done feeding, I slowly woke him up so that he didn’t have a chance to be in a bad mood. Then Sean played with Arthur while I got ready. When we were both finally ready, we got Arthur ready.
We dressed Arthur in a merino long-sleeve bodysuit and merino leggings. Then his regular cotton bodysuit and pants. The cotton bodysuit is size 3-6 months. It was big enough to work as a second layer but not too big that it was baggy. The pants, however, was his regular 0-3 months pants. It still worked great for a second later. We then dressed him in a fleece suit. We had to adjust the car seat buckles so that Arthur could fit in it with his fleece suit.
We left the house at 7:45. When we got to the car, which was parked just outside the house, we found it to be cold and covered in ice. We realized that we should have warmed up the car first. Arthur started to become squirmy. I decided to take Arthur back inside (in his car seat) and to wait until the car was fully warmed up. Ten minutes later, Sean texted me to say that the car was ready. In the car, we decided that we should come up with a better plan for the car situation tomorrow.
On the way to Stonehenge, we stopped by to get some coffee and quick breakfast bite. I stayed in the car with Arthur who was asleep in the car seat, while Sean went to get the necessities. Quick breakfast and coffee.
The drive to Stonehenge was supposed to be an hour according to here-maps but it took us around 1.5 hours instead. We left the house at 8am and we got to Stonehenge at 9:50am. This included the time for coffee stop. By the way, for navigation, we downloaded the England map on here-maps so we could use the maps offline. This worked so much better than google maps.
The drive to Stonehenge was really pretty. The rolling hills, green everywhere… and we went through some villages with cute cottages. We even saw a tank-crossing sign. No joke. Below is stock photo of the sign I got from the web.
Here’s what I mean by the title “The accidental convenience” for this post. Here-maps took us through some gravel road to the only a short walk to stones. It didn’t lead us to the visitor center.
By right, we should park at the visitor center, learn some things about the stones, and then take the shuttle bus to the stones. Instead, here-maps GPS took us only 50 meters away to where the bus stop was for the stones. This wasn’t really the proper way to do it. Sean got out of the car to ask if we could go see the stones through here without actually going to the visitor center since we already bought tickets online and we had the copy of the tickets printed out.
The guard asked us to first visit the visitor center. Sean told him that we have an infant and we were more interested in the stones and we didn’t mind not going to the visitor center. Thankfully the guard said that he’d let us go in but he would have to let the visitor center officer know of our ticket confirmation number. We were fine with that. This meant that we didn’t have to worry about getting on the shuttle bus with Arthur in this cold weather.
So we fed and changed Arthur before we left the car.
Arthur slept as we took our time with the stones. We weren’t there for very long. When we got back to the car, Arthur was still sleeping.
We decided to drive to the visitor center. We wanted to get the guidebook that we had purchased along with our tickets, and also, to grab some water and snacks from the cafe inside. Sean went inside while I stayed in the car to feed Arthur.
Bath was our next stop. Arthur slept the whole way there.
When we first got to Bath, we parked right by Royal Crescent. We got off the car and walked around there. Before we left the car, I once again fed and changed Arthur.
It was quite a nice walk, actually. It was cold but the sun was out. Meanwhile, Arthur slept throughout the walk.
At the parking lot, the public restroom was actually not bad at all.
Anyway, after the walk, we decided to head to Bath Abbey and check out the Roman Baths museum. We parked at The Podium parking structure and walked to the abbey. Before we left the car, we once again fed and changed Arthur. When we put him back inside the car seat/stroller combo, he was fully awake. As we walked, we realized that the cold didn’t bother him at all. That meant we bundled him up quite well.
At the Abbey, he wanted to be out of the stroller so Sean took him out and carried him. Arthur was looking around the place. It was cute.
Once we exited the Abbey, the Roman Baths museum was only a couple of steps away.
We went inside, bought tickets, and was told that we weren’t allowed to bring the stroller inside the museum. What I thought was cool was that the museum provided infant carrier. We didn’t need it though because we brought our own.
Arthur didn’t like the carrier very much. He was beginning to squirm.
It wasn’t long until he started crying. The bouncing didn’t really work. Sean tried so hard but Arthur continued to fuss.
When we finally got back to our stroller, he was even more unhappy. He started crying and screaming. A museum staff came up to us and offered to take us to a quiet room where I could nurse Arthur. We followed her and thanked her for the help and support.
But Arthur was not hungry. He was tired and he wanted to sleep. After some rocking and shushing, he finally fell asleep.We decided to head back to the car.
Before we got back to the parking structure, we dropped by Nero to grab a cup of coffee. While we were inside, it started snowing. Not a lot. The Podium is a parking structure but it also housed a supermarket called Waitrose. Since we didn’t have the opportunity to stock up on supplies yesterday, we decided to grab some stuff at the supermarket today, especially for breakfast and snacks.
After the grocery run, we decided to go home.We got back home around 7. We skipped Arthur’s bath, and instead put him to sleep. We were tired. We were all in bed by 8pm.
Tomorrow we plan to head to the villages in the Cotswolds.
two backpacks and a diaper bag 