Our train was late leaving so we wandered around the train station. 4 years ago my wife and I came to London and stayed in a hotel near Paddington. On the day we went home, we checked our luggage at a British Airways counter in the train station, but that has gone away now.
Our train left 20 minutes late. We had stop in a few cities on the way to Bath. I pulled out the GPS to see what our route was like, and to see how fast we were going. The train got up to 125 miles per hour at times, which is why the train is called the One-Two-Five.
From the Bath train station we got a cab over to our hotel. We checked in then walked around the City and made our way towards the Roman Baths. Bath isn't very big. We were only 3/4 of a mile from all of the shopping and touristy things. We took pictures of the Cathedral, then headed into the Baths for another self guided tour. The museum has been upgraded and expanded allot since I was last here in 1981. There is more detail about how the baths were created and what their significance was.
My favorite part was that people used to take small metal scraps and write out curses or favors that they wanted from the gods, then throw them into the hot water spring. The archeologists have found allot of these and had some in an exhibit case with their translations. I remember one that someone wanted a curse on whoever stole his sandals while he was in the baths.
I always remember the big parks in Bath. I was in the nearby town of Trowbridge in 1981 during the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Dianna. So when we would go to Bath, there would be huge arrangements of plants and flowers celebrating the wedding. The park I remember was closed for cleaning so we just looked through the gates then headed back to hotel and then lunch.
For lunch we walked away from city center and up the hill. We found a place caled "The Hole" or something like that. It was a small restaurant and we were the only ones in it. That's usually a recipe for disaster, but it was pretty good. As we were leaving, Mike asked why no one was there at 1:00 and the waitress said people usually come a bit later, and sure enough, a group came just before we left.
On the way back to the hotel we passed the Jane Austin museum. My daughters all love "Pride and Prejudice" so we stopped in. I bought a few things to bring back for Koren, but we decided not to take the tour (Yawn).
We spent a while walking through the shopping areas looking for a little chocolate shop that I used to love to buy some sort of treats at. I remember they were coated in powdered sugar and had some sort of nut or something crunchy in them. The whole shopping area has been rebuilt and looks nothing like I remember it, but we did find a good chocolate shop that had what I remember. It's called Alpini.
At one point during the day we stopped by a convenience store to buy something to drink, and while we were there I saw some white chocolate malted milk balls. My daughter Klair doesn't like regular chocolate, she likes white chocolate. So I bought some to see if they were any good. They were delicious, but since we still had 5 days to go, I figured I'd buy some later. Little did I know that we'd search quite a bit and never find any until we were at the airport in Paris. So I did buy 4 big bags of them to bring home to Klair.
For dinner, we had spotted an Indian restaurant. We ordered allot different dishes that came in small portions.
We thought about going to a movie since we had seen a large new cinema in town, but nothing seemed worth the effort.
Me in front of Bath Cathedral
Stanley on the upper deck of the Roman Baths
The Roman Baths
A park in Bath in 1981
A famous circle of homes
Mike out in the middle getting a panoramic picture
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