PLEASE note: This post was written by a very tired Amos, edited by a slightly less tired Lydia and posted under the account of a fresh-from-an-after-dinner Marci
The city of Bath is clean, spacious and very regular and symmetrical. This is all due to Georgian and Regency architecture. Georgian means the time of King George the 3rd , the one the American’s revolt against led, among other things, to the insanity he suffered during the last ten years of his life. Once he went mad, there was a Regent and that is Regency period. Some English architects were wandering around in Italy and they liked the Classical style, and at this time they were mucking around in the mud near a hot spring in Bath and they found a bunch of Roman ruins and the next thing you know all things Roman or Greek or classical was the rage. Put up columns and call the circular street the circus. They also seemed to find out why the city of Bath was called Bath; but sadly didn’t get the hint that they should take a bath.
The Roman Bath was the first thing we went to see and the exhibit was fantastic, with all kinds of things that they dug up very clever engineering and beautiful. Within about 20 years of getting to England in about 50 AD they had started building and keep on building for some 300 years till they left, and it was an impressive site. One of the interesting things about this site was that you could not only ask for a blessing but, when in a vindictive mood, ask for a curse on the person that stole your gloves or done you wrong,. It seems popular to either ask for the villain to go mad or, failing that, be turned into a liquid. I am not sure how that was to work out. There was a great audio tour and then followed a tour guide. That was clearly a good job for an actor who can’t find an alternative job. Our guide was incredibly enthusiastic. He told us there we still un-excavated ruins that they would get to, as soon as the city let them knock down the thousand year old abbey.
After this I went over to the Tourist Information to arrange the Stonehenge Tour. I probably should have done this before, but we were so busy I didn’t get to it. I was able to get the Mad Max tour which was recommended but just ½ day for Tuesday aka tomorrow. We were all just relieved to get on the tour at all, it wasn’t a sure thing.
As it turns out we did meet the Wife of Bath. It always seems to be hard to decide where to eat and we were standing outside of a pub where Lydia, Marci and I had had great fish and chips and/or meat dish the night before. There was a painted hussy of a woman, with huge fake nails, smoking a cigarette and she spoke up and recommended the Slug and Lettuce across the street. She said the pub was horrid and looked like she had spent many a late night in the pub. Lydia thought she must be associated with the other restaurant. Well any way, after going around the block we finally ended up back there and had a fine lunch.
We then went on the to Costume Museum which is part for the Roman Bath ticket. Marci and Lydia got to try on hoop skirts and corsets. Worrisomely to me they both said they thought the corset was comfortable! Any way the rest was okay but not nearly as well done and set out as the Roman Baths.
After this we split up with Marci and Lydia doing some shopping at second hand stories. I took Mom back to the B&B for a nap and I went on to see the Royal Crescent, Royal Lawn Bowling and oddly Royal put-put golf. I guess one of the younger Royals, Royally opened this. We then tried to do laundry but time and money is a problem; since you have to have the right coins and things just do not stay open as late. We then wandered much further than we meant looking for Take Away which we finally found and then stumbled on the yard of the Youth Hostel where we could find a place to sit and eat. Marci then convinced some people at the hostel to eat the rest of the pizza, since we did not want it go to waste. After a longish walk home and 76 steps to the room it was time for bed since we have to get up early to go to Stonehenge in the AM.
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