Just back from the pub after spending most of the day before that in Bath. Waiting up right now for laundry to get done so I can pack. Costing me 7GBP or $12.25 US to do one load of laundry, and that is bringing my own soap. Students going to college here must have a lot of spending money to blow on laundry, or be doing a lot of laundry in the sinks in their rooms. That is after the 7.84GBP I spent at the pub earlier to get a drink with my classmates on our last night in town. Had a pint of a nice Aspall Cidre off of the tap and some garlic bread w/ cheese (which was just a fat slice of white bread, with garlic butter and a thick slab of cheese melted over top). Much laughter was had, was fun to hang out with them all. Not really had much of a chance to socialize with most of them, and other than one person whom Id had class with before they are all still mostly strangers to me, so it was nice to get to know them all a bit better. Hope to have classes with them all again sometime. As much as I have loved London these last few days, I am looking forward to heading to Rome tomorrow where I should be in a little apartment with an actual kitchen so I can get groceries and cook instead of eating out all of the time. Trip has been great, but food prices ate up most of the money I brought. Laundry and pub tonight went on the debit card, as will most of lunch tomorrow. That aside, spent the morning over in Hyde Park. Walked along some of the periphery while most of the ladies in the group went and checked out the nearby Mayfair shopping area. Met up in front of Selfridges after that, which is a famous shopping store and whose name I kept mishearing as Suffragists until I finally saw a sign. Apparently starting in a few days is Fashion Week in London, so lots of fashion ads and decorations going up along that street already. After that, over to the Marble Arch tube station, out to a train station whose name just slipped my mine (mmm... cidre...), and then the ninety minute or so National Rail Service line out to Bath. Ive read some Jane Austen, but I was nowhere near the fan of some of the ladies in the group, so I didnt maybe appreciate Bath as much at first as they did. We started on a free tour of Bath but the tour guide was so awful at the beginning that we split off to do other things. (Apparently the tour got better later on, but it was still going to eat a huge hunk of the day and we had better things to do.) Most of the ladies went on to the Jane Austen Centre (and Museum) where they dressed up in period clothes and got pictures taken and other stuff. I wandered over to the Herschel Astronomy Museum. Small little building, the home Herschel had been living in when he discovered Uranus and where he began building the increasingly impressive telescopes he made. A lot of the house was actually about his sister, Caroline, and her contributions both to his work and to astronomy with the comets she had discovered. That ate up about an hour, so after that I wandered up the hill to the Crescent and took photos along the way. By the time I reached the top I was running a little late, or so I thought (need to buy a watch before I travel again), and I headed back down to Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths museum-tour-thingy. The Roman Baths were pretty impressive, that they still exist and still pump hot water out this day is impressive geologically but also architecturally that it still functions. Only slightly restored, most of the side chambers are pretty much rough stone with little sign of the tilework or paintings that would have decorated the place. But I found the history of its pre-Roman, Roman, and later British royal usage fascinating. One of those little quirky bits of history that make me wish I could look back in time and see what it would have been like. After the trip through touring the Baths it was pretty late and we basically just hung out for a little longer, got some sandwiches to eat on the train, and rode it back into London. Tomorrow morning: British Museum, then picnic in the park, then tube to the airport to Rome. (And after we arrive in Rome, no clue. Not looked at what was on the itinerary past that yet.)
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 23:22:41 +0000