Pictures:

May 15

May 16

May 17

We will stay all three nights at Marlborough House in Bath.

Plan: We will arrive at London Heathrow at 10:05am. We will then take the train to Bath and drop our luggage off at Marlborough House. Then we set off on our first day of (jet-lagged) sight-seeing! In Bath, we want to go to the Pump Room and drink the "waters", see the Assembly Rooms/Costume Museum and take a Bizarre Bath or Ghost tour.

What actually happened (per Christine): We did arrive at London Heathrow at 10:05 am. However, due to plane congestion, the plane waited on the ground for a gate for about 45 minutes. Finally we stepped foot on English soil (well, okay, the tile in the airport). After walking through what seemed like miles of deserted Heathrow airport, we got to immigration, waited in a huge long line, rather a queue, and got visas stamped in our passports! We took the train to London Paddington station. We had just missed the train to Bath, so we had an hour to kill. We went to a Starbucks (yes, they're everywhere), because we figured they would have wi-fi. They did, but it cost 6 pounds an hour (about $12/hr). We decided to hold out for free (or at least cheaper) wi-fi. That's why it has taken you all so long to get an update. We had our first experience with London public pay toilets at the train station (it's 20pence to get in). Thank you, Claire, for the initial pounds or we would not have gotten to use the toilet! :-) (It's toilets here or WCs, not bathrooms).

We finally got on the train to Bath Spa; it was about a 2 hour ride. We were both feeling quite tired and sleep-depped when we finally arrived in Bath about 3pm. We took a taxi to Marlborough House, which was quite beautiful (just like the pics on their website!) Our hostess, Laura, was dressed a little oddly (about 50 years old and dressed all in black with fishnets and black leather boots), but we have found that fashion here is much more versatile. (We have since seen several people dressed very similarly walking about town in the middle of the day, not going clubbing or anything). Anyway, she was really nice, sat us down, gave us a map of Bath, showed us where we were, drew lots of pictures on it for interesting things we should see in Bath. So we dropped our things in our room and started out right away. First we went up the hill from our B&B a couple of blocks to the Royal Crescent, a row of condos built in the 1700s in a huge crescent. It was amazing! And in front of it is this huge park and, because it was Sunday (and wasn't raining!), there were huge crowds of people playing football (soccer), frisbee and sunbathing. We went into Number 1 Royal Crescent, which has been decorated like it would have been in Georgian (Regency) times. It was pretty interesting, but it was just about closing time, so some of the room guides were gone. One of the neatest things they had there was a sedan chair, like from Regencies. I had always thought that they were carts with two wheels, pulled by a person. But they're not. Sedan chairs look like a very small telephone booth (it came up to my shoulders), with a tiny seat inside. Then there were two cross bars that two guys (or maybe four) carried each handle! The contraption weighed 50-70 pounds, not to mention the weight of the person inside. The sedan chair operators would actually bring the sedan chair inside the person's house and pick them up and drop then off directly from their bed! I thought that was really interesting. Sorry, I missed the picture, so you'll have to do with my description. Mike wants to know what my obsession with the sedan chair is all about, but I was just surprised by how different they were from how I imagined them to be and then wasn't able to get a picture to show you.

When we got out of Number 1 Royal Crescent, we walked around a lot. Most everything was closed; it being a Sunday night. We finally found a place to eat called "The Walrus and the Carpenter". They had good vegetarian food. Mike had vegetable chili and I had a nut loaf (kind of like the veggie burgers I make). The salads were rather odd (and we are finding this to be common) - it comes with small bit of regular salad (leaf lettuce with or without dressing), cole slaw, pasta salad and bean salad. Odd, but good.

Finally, we went back to Marlborough house and crashed early. Mike was snoozing by 7pm and I got to bed by 9pm. Unfortunately, I woke up at 2am and then couldn't go back to sleep, but owell! Mike slept till 7am, and he said this was the one advantage to not sleeping on the plane. :-)

Plan: This morning we will leave at 8:40am (early!) for an all-day Mad Max Tour of Stonehenge, Avebury, Lacock and Castle Combe.

What actually happened (per Christine): We got up, ate a quick breakfast of toast and cereal (too early for the hot breakfast) and went out for our Mad Max tour. A gray and drizzly day, and much cooler than the day before. I was navigating to the pick-up point and managed to get us a little lost so we made it to our tour with only 5 minutes to spare. It is very hard to find streets, even with a map, because Bath has random street signs. It always seems that you can never find the sign for the street you are currently on! And if there is a street sign, it isn't on a pole, it is located one story up on the corners of the buildings, in different spots, depending on the building. Rather frustrating.

We finally made it to our tour in a small bus with about 15 people, probably about half American, a few English and one Australian. Our guide was quite funny. He was this older guy from Wales named Malcolm. He kept starting stories and then stopping them, saying he'd get back to that later and then going off on some other topic. But really, he was quite amazing, because he kept up a running commentary the whole time (through a microphone headset) while he was driving! I know he does this all the time, but I still thought it took some talent. He also kept going on little soapboxes about his (apparently Tory) politics, which we thought quite amusing. First we went to Stonehenge and got to spend an hour there. It was pretty neat, we listened to an audio tour about all of the stones. Unfortunately, because of vandals (those pagan satan worshipers, according to our guide :-), the stones are now roped off and the closest you can get to them is probably 25-50 feet. Then, we went on to Avebury, which is a grouping of megalithic rocks like Stonehenge, but is 20 times bigger and you can go right up and touch the rocks. The town itself is right in the middle of the henge (and so are a lot of sheep, so we really had to watch our feet!).

After Stonehenge and Avebury, we went off to Lacock. It was a really cute little town. The Abbey at Lacock was one of the Harry Potter filming site, so we got several pictures that look like we were in the halls or classrooms at Hogwarts! The Abbey was also the site of the very first photograph every developed in the 1800s. In addition, the town was a filming site for the BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice" (Claire, the one with Mr. Darcy in the wet shirt :-), so we got pictures of that, too. We ate "pasties" (little savoury pastries, like hot pockets, but fresh) at a small bakery for lunch. The town of Lacock used to be owned by a wealthy noble family, like so many small towns, but they landowner gave the entire property to the national heritage treasury in World War II because of the high taxes. So now, everyone who lives there is a tenant to the government, who makes sure that rental preference is given to people who's families have a history in the town or work nearby, thereby keeping it a very genuine old town. Our next stop was Castle Combe in the Cotswolds, which was perfectly picturesque, but almost completely owned by wealthy people who vacation (and don't live) there, so the town had a more hollow feel, though it was certainly very pretty, with a little river running through it. There was no castle in Castle Combe; apparently, it had been torn down to create a palatial manor house which is now a very posh hotel where they filmed the original "Dr.Doolittle" (the one with Rex Harrison, not Eddy Murphy).

When we arrived back in Bath, it was too late to do most tours of the sites and too early for an evening walking tour, so we went to the Pump Room and had tea. We got tea, cakes (more like eclairs), scones with jam and clotted cream, assorted vegetarian tea sandwiches (cucumber, cheese and watercress, egg salad, cream cheese and tofu with red pepper - all in small triangles with no crust). Claire and Barbara - Claire's scones are definitely more moist than the ones here. The scones here are pretty dry and tasteless. The addition of clotted cream (which tastes, looks and spreads very much like a lightly sweetened butter) is really needed to be able to eat them. Mom - for your information, I "took the waters". I got a glass of the warm mineral water. It isn't quite as bad as they describe it, but it really doesn't taste good.(but Mike says it's nasty) The water smells a bit like sulfur and tastes a bit metallic. It is much better warm when you get it fresh, as you don't notice the sulfur smell as bad as when it cools down. After our tea, we went back to the B&B to rest up for an evening walking tour.

That night we went on a ghost tour of Bath. We figured a cold rainy night would be ideal for ghosts. Apparently, we were the only ones who thought so, since we were the only people on the tour. It was quite fun, very different than the very theatrical ghost tours I've been on in New Orleans. The guide was a quintessential british gentleman and took us around and just told us ghost stories, mostly what people have reported seeing in certain areas and who they postulate the ghost might be. We finally got back to Marlborough House, exhausted, by 10pm.

Plan: More Bath sight-seeing.

What actually happened (per Christine): We had another full day of sightseeing ahead of us. We had an awesome cooked breakfast of eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoes, tea, scones (no clotted cream), and toast. Then we set out across town to see a glass-blowing demonstration. The glass blowing place was a little shop and it looked like two teenagers (a girl and a guy) who were doing the demo. The girl did the talking. She said that it usually took 12 years to apprentice to be a glass blower, but since they had such a small shop (only 4 employees), they were on a fast track for learning. They guy had been working there for 6 years and the girl, still an assistant, had been working there for 3 years. They were absolutely amazing as they made glass champagne flutes. They were swinging hot metal bars around with 1300 degree glass ovens and all these special tools. It was almost like a dance and each part was choreographed just so. Amazing.

Then we went and toured the Roman bath houses. Apparently, the hot springs of Bath have been around for a VERY long time. they have even found stone age tools in the water. When Rome conquered Britain nearly two thousand years ago, they found the original people worshipping Sulis (a goddess of wisdom and health) at the hot fountains which they believed to be a sacred site. The Romans thought that sounded like their goddess Minerva, so they enclosed the spring and created a big temple and bath house to Minerva/Sulis on the site. After Rome fell, the site was abandoned and eventually collapsed in on itself (due to marshy lands, being near a river, etc). The site was built over and various other groups have used the land above to create their own baths. In the late 1800s, they excavated and found the Roman remains and restored it (somewhat) to its original glory and have a very cool museum under the pump room. (they don't currently allow bathing in the waters since a meningitis scare in the 1970s, but there are plans to open a new modern spa using the warm spring. (This project is four years overdue and millions of dollars over budget; locals are quite exasperated).

Next we went on a historical walking tour of Bath. Very interesting, but next time, we need to remember to take an overview tour of a city BEFORE doing anything else. It really makes it much easier to find everything later. We ducked out of our tour early to see the Assembly Rooms and the costume museum. The Assembly Rooms were okay, just big ball rooms. Apparently you can still rent them out for wedding receptions or business meetings and the like. The costume museum was also just okay, not a whole lot of costumes, but they did have an exhibit of costumes from all of the Jane Austen movies, which was very fun, as we had just recently seen most of them (Mike having been on a Jane Austen kick from Netflix).

We were really, really tired by this time, so we went to dinner at Porters, a vegetarian pub. Pretty good food....I had a baked potato with sour cream, corn and cheese and Mike had vegetarian chili. We both had the hard cider on tap (half-pint) and it was pretty good. We did feel a bit out of place as it did seem to be a very trend spot for hip young things who are into music. Owell.

On our way to go to our last walking tour in Bath, we stopped and watched a large group of people playing "Boules", some sort of lawn bowling game. Mike, especially, was fascinated. Then we headed off to the Bizarre Bath comedy walking tour. It was quite good, a mixture of comedy routine, ad-lib, magic tricks and just plain silliness. Finally, we headed back to collapse in our beds.

May 15

May 16

May 17