I traveled through a lot of countries in Europe & took a cruise -- flying BACK now

Googling how to see Stonehenge for free didn't just save my Jew wallet some money. It unlocked a way to experience it the way locals do.

It turns out that Stonehenge isn't that far from the road, but seeing it from the road isn't feasible because there's nowhere to park or stop. However, a gentle hiking trail exists from a neighborhood near Stonehenge to the sight itself, and that trail runs incredibly close to the trail used by the suckers that pay for it.

I found that if you set your Google Maps to direct you to the corner of Willoughby Rd and Fargo Rd in Salisbury, England, you'll be dropped right at the trailheaad. From the Google satellite view, it looked like about a 1.5-mile flat walk on a trail sandwiched between fields of dirt and trees.

I will admit that getting out of London was a challenge. It didn't help that the car I rented -- a Jaguar SUV -- had all kinds of annoying features I had to figure out how to turn off. It had a REALLY aggressive auto stop-start feature, which would kill the engine every time the car would come to a stop for a few seconds. That's brutal when you're driving in big city, heavy traffic. Additionally, it had an annoying loud beeping sound every time I exceeded the speed limit by 2mph or more. It wasn't straightforward how to get rid of either of these, but eventually I figured them out -- but not before they tortured me on my initial drive back to the hotel to get everyone else after picking up the car.

The most difficult thing about "wrong side driving" for me was unlearning the natural feel of where the car sits on the road, relative to where I'm sitting. When sitting on the left side of the car, I have a great feel for that, as I have been driving that way for close to 40 years. However, sitting on the right side, I kept drifting over to the left side and nearly side-swiping parked vehicles or whatever was on or near the curb. This was because sitting on the right side made me always feel like I was too far over to the right, so I'd incorrectly move left to "correct" the feeling. This was tough to get used to, but fortunately I didn't hit anything.

Anyway, I finally got us over to the streetcorner where we'd park. It was a normal-looking residential/commerical street, and the parking along the curb was totally free and without limit. There were a number of other cars parked there (I'd say about 10), presumably all locals who knew this trick to see Stonehenge.

We got out, and Ben noticed a bunch of blackberry bushes. He wanted to pick and collect them to eat, but I told him we were running short on daylight and would do it after we got back. These were wild blackberry bushes, and didn't belong to anyone.

Why were we running short on daylight in the summer? For reasons not worth explaining, I wasn't able to get the car until after 4pm. Then I had to go back, pick everyone up, and then we also stopped to eat on the way. Also recall that it's 90 miles away and London has a lot of traffic. By the time we pulled up to the parking spot, it was about 8pm, and the sunset was 9:15. This gave us about 100 minutes or so of daylight, so obviously I wanted to get over to Stonehenge and spend the time we needed to look at it, and deal with the berries later.



Recall I said that Google Maps showed a boring, 1.5-mile flat trail to Stonehenge. Fortunately, it was FAR more interesting, and the walk to Stonehenge ended up quite charming.

After walking through a scenic little corridor of trees, you pop out along various interesting farms. First, there was a huge field of wheat. Believe it or not, I had never seen a wheat field in person (at least not on foot), and this one stretched a long way:




Then we noticed sheep and cows in the fields along side of us. This was becoming a far more interesting walk than across fields of dirt like on Google Maps. But I found a surprising sign on the fence on both sides.

The sign proclaimed that these animals were here for "fire abatement grazing", and amazingly, that it was a "conservancy" where you are allowed to enter and interact with the animals!

:what

What was this, a petting zoo? So when in Rome... (volume up)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwFpzcjlsgE

(notice Stonehenge in the background)



Anyway, after dodging our way through sheep shit (there was a lot of it), we went back on the main trail and headed toward Stonehenge itself....

I liked Stonehenge. It's not gigantic, but it's not small, either. There's 2 security guards who mill around, so you can get an idea of the size of it. If you look carefully in the below picture, you'll see a little yellow spot in the middle of it. That's the security guard's shirt. You can see the other guard all the way on the left.




And in case you want to see the difference between the pay trail and the free trail I did, here's the two trails right next to each other. The main difference is that the pay trail circles around it, whereas the free one only sees it from one side. But who cares? It looks similar from all angles.




So which picture did it actually look like? One is obviously a lot closer-looking than the other.

Well, the first picture is zoomed in, so it didn't look THAT close. But the second picture doesn't do it justice, as it makes it look much farther away than when actually there. So imagine between the two sizes, and that's about how it looked in person. I felt I was close enough to get a good view without wishing I were much closer.



There are more sheep right by Stonehenge, so it turned out we didn't even have to get off the trail to see them.

By the time we walked back, it was pitch dark once we got to the car. Ben picked his blackberries, we placed them in a paper cup I had in the car, and we ate them on the way back to London.

Successful day (night) trip!



In my opinion, the free version of Stonehenge is far superior to the pay one, provided you have a car. This is because:

- Far less crowded

- It's open 24 hours, unlike the pay version which has its last admission at 5pm

- Easy on Jew wallet (free, other than transportation costs)

- Scenic hike there with wheat farm, sheep, and cows

- You don't feel like you're in a tourist trap



I highly recommend you do it this way, provided you don't mind the drive and the hassle of getting a car. We used the car to drive to Heathrow the next day to being the flight home.

Still need to post more trip details, which I will soon enough.

Just wanted to update that I got a pleasant surprise from Hawaiian Airlines, related to the credit I would have otherwise had to waste from April 2025, which would have set me back about $3300.

After a lot of effort, they agreed to help me out and gave me until August 2026 to travel. Additionally, they converted the credits into a more flexible form. This is excellent, and is like found money that I had written off as lost.

:yes


Now I have to get to work to book a future Hawaii vacation (my first in over a decade).

I keep forgetting to post more travel stories from this Europe trip.

The recent poll I did, regarding the filthy restaurant, was of course from this trip.

Anyway, while Hawaiian Airlines surprisingly issued me full airline credit for the missed April 2025 trip (which was much better than I was asking them for), their website and overall booking system is beyond terrible.

To make a long story short, I got a gigantic stack of credit vouchers (21 total lol) for different amounts, and I had to use them to rebook. Pain in the ass, but obviously I was thrilled to have them.

However, what wasn't thrilling was the fact that I got an error trying to use them on the website. No matter what I did, I couldn't get them to work. I called the support number the site gave me when the failures occurred.

The first Philippines rep had some backwater internet and his VOIP connection was awful, so we got nowhere.

I called back and got him again, because it's a small department. Again his connection was awful. We tried to book manually, with me spelling out the names and giving all the vouchers and PINs individually, and of course it disconnected him again about 20 minutes in. Ugh!!

I called back and got a different guy. This one had a good connection but had the IQ of a potato, yet thought he was competent. I tried rebooking with him, but he was understanding less and less about what I was doing (he thought all 21 vouchers were in my name and kept saying I couldn't use them for other passengers, and couldn't get past that), so I had to abort and ask for a supervisor, which he kept resisting but finally got one.

The supervisor was smart and competent. Yay! However, the voucher system was such fail that even he was having trouble. In one case, a voucher wasn't working and kept giving him unspecified error messages. He finally realized that the voucher was issued to me as Todd Witteles with 3 spaces after my name, and that apparently is seen by the system as different than just Todd Witteles with no trailing spaces, so it kept giving errors. My phone actually clocked a full 2 hours before I was done with that call. Had I stayed on with the regular rep (the stupid one), it would have never gotten done.

Upon further research I learned that Hawaiian just has an awful website and a super antiquated and buggy reservations system, and you just have to deal with it if you fly with them. Maybe this will improve when they fully are merged into Alaska Airlines' system, but I hear that's no prize either.

No idea how the average person handles this. Even for me and all of my Jew skills, it took hours and I was tearing my hair out. I couldn't even consider abandoning ship because I had $3300 worth of vouchers, so it's not like I was putting in this effort to save $20.

BUMP

I plan to post more about this trip as time goes on, but here's a weird story from the Crystal ship which some of you might find amusing...


Crystal will do your laundry for free, but I really hate letting cruise staff do my laundry because they tend to do a shitty job. I also wonder if it's mixed with other people's laundry, perhaps placed with some kind of barrier so it doesn't mix up. Kinda think it has to be something like that. Every time I let a cruise ship do my laundry, it came out smelling only half clean.

Anyway, they have (also free) laundry facilities on each floor, and I'm more of a serve-yourself guy in general, so I chose to do my own laundry.

I walked in, and the only person in the room was a woman in a sundress who looked about 65. It was about 11pm, so honestly I was surprised to see anyone else.

She immediately remarked, "Oh! Things just got a lot nicer looking in here!"

:wtf2

Did she really mean what I thought she meant?

I just said hello, and tried to keep to myself. She kept trying to engage me in small talk, and it became clear pretty quickly that I was being hit on by an old lady.

She was just about done with her laundry, as her dryers were just finishing up. After the second one rang, she pulled out her clothes and then asked, "Can you do me a favor? I need a tall man with long arms to reach into that dryer and make sure I didn't leave anything."

I agreed to do it, but part of me thought this was just a story so she could stare at me doing it, like some kind of fetish of hers or something. I was praying that I wasn't going to reach in and find her granny panties, or perhaps worse.

Fortunately, the dryer was empty. She thanked me, talked a little bit more, then finally left the room and said goodnight. I assumed she finally got the picture that I didn't want to have senior citizen cruise sex. I didn't see her after that, though this was like the second-to-last night of the cruise.

So it looks like I'm now at the point of my life where old ladies are going to hit on me.

Lovely.

I will say that most people on Crystal cruises are wealthy, so I probably could have parlayed this into a 2026 WSOP stake had I shown any interest in her.

A Jew With Anxiety?
A possible title for your thousand page biography

spoiler alert. Jewish parents

Were you aware that many countries do not permit the carrying of a firearm in public, licensed or not. Claiming you are an American citizen means zero. Their country, their rules. Saying sorry never works.

In Canada there is no law against burning the American flag.
Should make the news

Carnival offers ridiculously cheap offer sometimes this is one i've got now from Seattle--->Hawaii, then around Hawaii and back to Seattle for only $370



lol maybe its just me but its so cheap hard to not think about..

Did just return from a Cruise out of Miami maybe why im getting this good offer but, very good hard to not notice..



im going to NJ in a month tho but further out idk..