Bath

So this last Saturday I had the pleasure of going to Bath with a friend of mine, Lea, and her parents.  It was a weird coincidence that we ended up going together, actually.  I asked to be put on the waiting list for Bath after I signed up for the trip to Stonehenge in April.  On the wednesday before the trip I got an email from another girl saying she had two tickets she wanted to sell.  I was excited and asked around to find out if there was anyone free on the weekend.  Everyone was busy, including Lea, who just said that her parents were busy, so I didn't bother explaining why I'd asked.  Then we met for tea a few days later and I happened to mention that I was going on the Bath trip and she exclaimed that she, too, was going with her parents.  We decided to meet up and walk over together.

It was awesome.  We left at half-seven in the morning and walked to the school together.  The bus took an hour and forty-five minutes (roughly) to get there, which was miles better than the four hours and thirty five minutes that the internet suggested the bus would take.  I managed to keep of car sickness with my new Seabands and motion sickness tabs (yay!) and we arrived in generally high spirits.

First we stopped for breakfast, then we hit the town.  It was just before ten in the morning, so we decided to wander first.  We went past the Theatre Royal, then we just sort of... wandered. There's not a better word for it.  I'm not sure exactly what we were looking for, but we found a church and a bunch of shops and cute little places.  There's something about Bath that makes that mean so much more.  Everything around just feels old.  That sounds weird, but it's true.  It's as if, while you're walking down these cobbled streets and tiny lanes, surrounded by butcher shops, card stores, and a few odd pubs and pasty makers, you can actually feel the history around you.  Everything has this very specific look to it, which I really can't describe.

Anyway, we ended up finding a church called "St. Michael Without," and went it.  It looked to be this enormous Cathedral, so I was of course thrilled, and it was an enormous cathedral.  But... it wasn't what we were expecting.

Okay, I get it, it's a church and this is Bath, so there's not a lot of room to expand.  That was apparently a problem they noticed with the tourist crowd, because there was no where to put a gift shop.  So logically, they cordoned off the back quarter of the church and transformed it into a gift shop and... cafe.... now I realize this is just my catholic upbringing here, where it was practically a cardinal sin to have gum in church, but it really irked me that there were people just chilling with coffee in a cathedral.  It has always bothered me when tourists are disrespectful of churches that are in use, when you're trying to pray at the Mission in Santa Cruz and a bunch of people come in to take photos, or worse, when groups of school children come in.  To put this in perspective, when I was in Westminster Abbey, I went to light a candle and turned around to see my friend standing there, on the plinth, in the chaplet.  If I weren't in a church I'd have told him to get the hell out of there.  That was not a place to stand and look, it was a place to pray.  I was so angry that I lit my candle and left the church without a second thought.  It wasn't until I was outside that I realized I had forgotten to say a prayer over my candle.  So coming into a church and seeing people having coffee... it didn't anger me because, obviously, that's what it's there for... but it did confuse the hell out of me.

So, long story short, we left St. Michael Without pretty quickly.  We found a market, wandered around, considered buying Welsh flags, found a few sweet shops, things like that.  Then we went to Bath Abbey.  Unfortunately I don't have any photos for this blog, because my camera is waaaaaaay over there and I'd have to find the cord and that sounds like a lot of work, so I'll post those in a few days.

Anyway, Bath Abbey was amazing.  We went on the tour which brought us all the way up onto the bell tower.  It was interesting and informative.  We split into groups to fit into tiny places like the clock face and the bell tower.  We were actually with the bells at noon, which was simultaneously awe inspiring and painful.  The bells were insanely loud, but I was filming it so I couldn't plug my ears, but I also didn't want to.  It was so amazing.  Then we went on top of the bell tower to see a view of the whole city laid out before us.  We could even see into the Roman baths, which was nice since none of us wanted to pay the £13 fee to get in.

After that we went to the Crescent, which is this really famous building where rich people used to stay (and still do).  I realized I'd lost one of my seabands from my pocket somewhere in Bath Abbey, and we wandered walked through the park beside the Crescent.  We had lunch and then Lea and I went to the Jane Austen Centre while her parents went to amuse themselves somewhere else (I should probably explain that Lea is studying here from Germany, and her parents spoke very little English, so I know they were talking, but I'm not sure where they decided to go).

The Jane Austen Centre was... okay.  I bought an "I <3 Darcy" lip balm (desperately needed) and a quill just for funzies, but I spent a small fortune just on those things.  The tour cost £8 and ended up being quite dull.  The best part was later when we went into the museum.  There was a bit of information, a short film we could see, though we only saw around five minutes of it, and then the really fun part.  They had a wardrobe of dresses we got to put on and take photos in, I looked ridiculous, and Lea looked awesome.  There was a tray of cookies that were AMAZING, and a small area where we could try out writing with a quill and ink.  I got ink on my finger and felt like a proper writer.  Jo Marsh supposedly always had ink on her fingers from writing, right?

 

We went outside after that and met up Lea's parents for a quick tea before getting back on the bus for Swansea.  In all, a very fun day, though to be honest, it was more fun getting to hang out with Lea at all those cool, ancient places, than it was to just see them.  It's always great to realize that a new friend is a good friend.

One more thing: when we got back to Swansea we found a St. David's Day faire going on.  Weird that on St. David's day neither of us were in, you know, Wales... anyway we managed to each score a Welsh flag while they were cleaning up.  I'm pretty excited because I was disinclined to spend money on one, but I really want one.  Now I have one that was cheap and has a good story behind it.  It's more than just "oh, I studied in Wales for a year," now it's "Well there was this fair going on, and I was with my friend who was also studying in Wales..." Because you're never really done for, as long as you have a good story and someone to tell it to, right?