The first part of our recent trip was to Bath. I was anxious because I hadn’t done a lot of driving and it wasn’t entirely clear how well our GPS was going to work. As I hinted in the previous post, the GPS was brilliant, flawless, amazing. The only difficult part was the occasional roundabout.
All of a sudden I am not clear whether it is roundabout or traffic circle. Ah, I just have to think back to what the GPS said: “Enter roundabout and take 3rd exit to blah blah street.” So here are Sue and I counting exits: “One … two … wait - was that an exit … THREE … oh shit!” Once I took the wrong exit but the GPS recovered quickly and so did we. Another time I knew where I wanted to go but must have counted wrong, so I did a quick maneuver and ended up on the wrong side of the road … uh … very briefly, no worries, nobody was hurt … cheers!
My US license expires in September this year. Meanwhile I have one year to get a UK license and that year is up at the end of June. BUT, once I officially apply for a learner’s permit here I cannot drive on my US license AND I cannot drive in the UK without an experienced UK driver … pretty weird, eh? So, we have a UK trip to Wales next week and then after that I think I just need to try to get my UK license ASAP.
So in Bath we arrived at this beautiful B&B just outside of Bath:
The house was something else, quiet, nice, very nice family, etc.
The next day we drove into downtown Bath, about, oh I don’t know, 2 or 3 miles away if that? The highway was backed up from the roundabout at 10am, Bath is a tourist attraction extraordinaire, and for what? Well, this:
That’s the Bath Abbey in the background there.
Yes, the Roman Baths, 2000 years old, the original plumbing still works except for a minor algae problem that apparently (but how they know I have no idea) wasn’t a problem back then. Anything 2000 years old is all right with me, however, and I thought this was pretty cool.
While wandering around afterwards, we wandered in to the Bath Abbey and saw a small orchestra and chorus practicing Bach’s The Passion of Christ. Coincidentally, Sue, Madeline and I had just gone to watch our friend Ruth perform that somewhere in London. I was shocked, simply shocked, to discover that I had been blasted by this very music my entire childhood. Seeing it performed before my eyes was an unexpected pleasure, and unlike every ballet performance I have been to, I had absolutely no trouble staying awake even though the whole thing was in German.
In London the week before, Madeline couldn’t help giggling at seeing a grown man sing like a … grown woman. In Bath here was just such a grown man doing just that during the rehearsal:
This particular man was very good, however, definitely better than the one at the London performance. Still, I can’t help wonder whether a woman wouldn’t make a better choice for this role?
After watching this for a while we decided to hang out in a square across the way from the Roman Baths and watch a very very bad performer get strangely large amounts of money from onlookers (unless they were just putting in 2-pence pieces):
I think the picture speaks for itself. That guy was so bad I almost gave Madeline some money to offer the guy on condition that he would just stop playing and leave. I am not exaggerating.
So then these two guys came out and since one had a cello I thought they might be more serious musicians, and indeed they were:
They took a very long time to get started and they should have had some sort of amplification because it was a decent sized square, and the cellist seemed a little embarrassed and there was a problem with the wind, etc. Still, with his friend holding the music he played a nice cello piece by good old J.S. Bach that I liked quite well. So as soon as he finished in went the two kids with a pound each to show our appreciation.
From there we headed out to the local park, and this park was one amazing park. We knew the kids would love it when we drove by the day before, but we didn’t realize how much they would love it. We spent two hours there just watching the kids run around from one thing to another, happily playing with kids they never met, running into the occasional obnoxious teenager, and one really obnoxious mother. But that’s ok. The highlight was the zipline, which with the occasional push got the kids going so fast that when they hit the end of the line they ended up almost horizontal to the ground. Hard to explain but luckily we have about 30 pictures, which I have narrowed down to two:
Luckily both kids knew to hang on for dear life!
All in all, Bath was a nice place to visit. Not sure when we’ll get there again.
But Salisbury, where we stayed the following day, that is a place worth visiting again, just for the privilege of seeing the amazing Church. Unfortunately I have no pictures of it because I thought we didn’t have the camera with us - turns out we did, which is a shame. The church is called Salisbury Cathedral, built in 1220 or thereabouts. It’s the tallest medieval church still standing in England. It contains one of the four remaining originals of the Magna Carta. Ah - maybe wikipedia won’t mind my borrowing the image???
Inside the huge church was a massive organ and some choir boys singing, rehearsing for an Easter concert. They were angelic - uh, their voices were. The church was huge, each chair had a “in memory of so-and-so” on it, the choir was practicing, and I was thinking … If you ever feel the need to be part of something bigger than yourself, you might just want to give church a try … it might be what you’re looking for.
Yes, I was moved, but I doubt it would last beyond the first sermon. But you never know …