Monday, February 18, 2008

Tom's Birthday Bath

Our friend Tom's birthday was this past Saturday, and he wanted us to all leave London for a weekend to see what lies outside our new home. So we hopped a train to Bath and spent the weekend touring the little town, sight seeing, eating, drinking, and of course bathing.

When we got there, we checked into our hotel, which was just over the bridge from the centre of the city (about a 5 minute walk). The rooms were adequate - bed, tv, toilet...no bath in our room, which we found quite amusing. After a lovely lunch in a renovated train station, we went to the Roman Bath museum, where we learned that a lot of what was displayed there was not actually original, and we witnessed dumb tourists sticking their hands into the ancient bath, with signs above them clearly stating not to touch the water since the bath waters were not filtered and bath was still lined with lead. We went to the Holburne Museum of Art to see an exhibit on 70 years of Penguin book design, but were a bit disappointed when we saw that 70 years fit into one small room. After a drink and some cards at a pub, we went out for a wonderful fish dinner and headed to home base for a night cap and an some well needed sleep.

Sunday we decided to heal ourselves in hot spring waters of Bath at the Thermae spa. Once Tom and Caron got over the shock of Leo in his blue Speedo, we all spent the morning relaxing in the pools (one was on the roof of the building with a view of the city) and in the steam rooms. Feeling healthy and rejuvenated, we had some pints and lunch and then went on our separate ways. Tom and Caron toured the Jane Austen museum and Leo and I went to the home of the man who found Uranus (giggle). We met up again for tea and cakes at Sally Lunn's in the oldest house in Bath. Realizing we had seen pretty much all of Bath, we hopped an earlier train home, where we got to sit in first class. So, what did we learn - Tom is old, England extends beyond London, sulphur water tastes bad, fudge is not always as wonderful as it seems, and first class travel is way better than normal class. Pictures will be posted on Wednesday (when we hopefully will get our internet set up...yeay!)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I looked at the internet and Bath looks lovely there. Did you get to go inside of the bridge? What is there?
Olga

Jen said...

There was a bridge that had stores on it, which we had to cross to get to our hotel. It kind of looked like a small Ponte Vecchio from the outside.

Anonymous said...

the fudge comment was a little cryptic... explain?

heather

Anonymous said...

yes,
that suppose to look like Ponte Vecchio, that is the bridge I was asking about
Olga

Jen said...

about the fudge...i always think that fudge will be awesome. there were numerous fudge shops in bath, and other sweet shops, and caron and i were suckered in by free samples. the samples were pretty good, but what we ended up buying was hard and tasted kind of like cheap frosting. but, as it was fudge, we were forced to consume all of it and kept talking about buying more.