Bath Miscellany

The street signs in Bath are carved into the sides of the buildings. I find it charming.

One day it was sunny and I went and read outside the Royal Crescent and watched the British youth play soccer on the grassy area out front. It was lovely.

This is the Pig and Fiddle (for SCS)

I am so proud of this curry. Not because I made it. On the contrary, I was lying on the couch watching my favorite bits of Persuasion in slow motion while it was created. A and I did the shopping for it, though, and while we were searching for coconut milk and curry powder, we stumbled onto bottles of curry sauce for SIX PENCE. That's like 10 cents. There's nothing you can buy for six pence in Great Britain. Except for this. I was very, very pleased.

Glastonbury, Wells and Portsmouth

Wednesday we visited Glastonbury and Wells. Glastonbury is home to the Tor, a large, mystical hill that some people believe was King Arthur's Avalon. Long ago it was an island with an abbey on its shores and local legend claims that Christianity was brought there by Joseph of Arimathaea. Monks at the abbey purportedly found the body of King Arthur on their land, but that may have been a publicity stunt to bring money to the institution. The abbey was the second largest in Britain in the early 1500s (after Westminster) but Henry VIII had it destroyed when he broke with the Catholic Church. The abbot was taken to the top of the Tor and killed, his head was posted outside the remains of the abbey, and his drawn and quartered body was given to Anglican churches in Somerset. The abbot's kitchen is the only building on the property that remained intact (monks couldn't worship there and there was no lead in the ceiling to be stolen) and that is where I made bread with a darling fake monk. The Coordinatrix took a video of it, but I haven't yet decided if she's allowed to post it. Too bad we can't cut me out of it and just show the cute British monk boy.

Abbey Ruins

It was pouring (England, why you gotta be that way?)

Lady Chapel Ruins

Wells Cathedral may have just become my favorite cathedral. It's so beautiful inside! Go look it up online, because I don't have access to any of the photos of it right now.

Yesterday we drove to Portsmouth on the southern coast. It's the home of Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory, the Royal Naval Museum, and other sea-lover attractions. Ships are really big. I only got us lost twice on yesterday's journey, but one of those detours involved a trip through Limpley Stoke, a village with the narrowest streets I have EVER seen.

Tomorrow AandA go home, the Coordinatrix and I go to the Lake District for two nights, and then we join our good friend Pinchy in Scotland for two weeks.

As We Like It

Yesterday we visited Stratford and Warwick (pronounce that without the second w). I toured Stratford about two years ago, but it was January and COLD the day I was there. It's a really different city when you don't have to scuttle into buildings for warmth as often as possible.

Warwick boasts a giant castle that was inhabited until quite recently. It's all done up for the tourists and I kind of hated it (admittedly my traveling companions say I skipped the best part, but I did see the singing plague victims). It's very much what visiting a castle would be like if Disney got its hands on one. I'm sure it would be fantastic with kids, but I wish I'd lingered in Stratford and remembered to toss two coins into the swan fountain to snag myself a husband instead. I did take this one picture while I was there so you could see that it is very impressive despite my bad attitude. All of the people are wax creations. I'm not sure what that floating white thing is. Ghost? Camera problem?


In the evening we returned to Stratford and watched the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of "As You Like It." It was brilliant, as anticipated. I just saw the Utah Shakespearean Festival's version of "As You Like It" at the beginning of the month, and it's always interesting to see two productions of the same play by different companies. The RSC had interesting costumes. The play began with very traditional, formal, dark-colored outfits and when the characters entered the Forest of Arden, their clothing gradually became lighter colored and more modern. At the wedding at the end, they wore white (or light colored), contemporary outfits. Very nice. Here's my question for the RSC: Was that a real rabbit that was skinned on stage? It looked real.

We Should Have Brought Enzo to England

We rented a car on Monday. The Coordinatrix is the designated driver and I am the designated navigator. The Coordinatrix is better at her job than I am. It's a good thing she's so even-tempered, because driving British-style is tricksy, particularly since we were upgraded to an Audi that opens with one of those fancy button clicky deals. The button in our clicky thing is dead, though, so we have to use the KEY and if we use the KEY, the car alarm goes off if the ignition isn't turned on within 15 seconds. Brilliant, right? It took us three car alarm incidents before we pulled out the manual and figured that one out.

Monday we went to Wales. The sun was shining! First we went to Tintern Abbey, my new favorite place. It's a fairly impressive ruin from the outside.


The inside, though, is so hauntingly beautiful. There's something about the fact that is a ruin, that the roof is gone and the outside is covered in lichen, that make the beautiful, airy interior with its grass floor even more remarkable.





After Tintern Abbey we visited a Welsh open-air folk-life museum. There was a castle and gardens and forty other buildings transplanted from around Wales, including a cock-fighting arena (the animal competitors wore spurs and magic charms). My favorite part of the castle was this bushy plant in the rose garden. It's a secret room.



If I lived there, I would spend all my time in the bush. And I would wear makeup and fix my hair if I were going to have my picture taken coming out of the bush, which I did not do here. [Note: I always put my sunglasses up on my head like that and then my curls wrap around the glasses and I have to spend several minutes pulling my hair out of the glasses. I'll be bald if I keep it up.]



And then we got trapped in Cardiff, because I'm not such a good navigator and it was rush hour and British roundabouts are rubbish. We did eventually escape and made our way to Caerphilly to eat dinner in sight of the castle, Britain's second largest after Windsor. Word on the street is that it's haunted.

Mamma Mia!

The Coordinatrix is sort of a burster-into-song type of gal. She and the Australians on our package tour briefly discussed hijacking the microphone at the front of our tour bus for karaoke purposes. She's like that. And that is why she was THRILLED when we discovered that a local night club/theater was hosting a Mamma Mia singalong last night. The club showed the movie, hosted by a woman in gold spandex pants (she was sort of a British TV NYC Jewish mother with her handbag and comments about how Pierce Brosnan can't sing but is easy on the eyes), and we all stood up and belted out the songs when there was singing in the film. I agreed to go to humor the Coordinatrix, but it was so fun! I'm super sad that we won't be here for the Bride and Prejudice dancealong.

Bath Skyline

I'm supposed to be meeting the Coordinatrix for Evensong at Bath Abbey right now, but my jeans are covered in mud, so I've decided I'm not fit for a church service. I just spent four hours hiking the Bath Skyline Trail with its beautiful views of the city and paths that lead through fields and woods and, once, a cow pasture that was not mentioned in my leaflet and where I tried not to make eye contact with the giant cows who were (seriously) at least twice as big as the sweet Swiss cows we made friends with in Lucerne. Cows can trample you right to death. I got lost about four times but only once was it a frightening I'm-going-to-die-alone-in-Bathampton-Woods kind of lost.


Bath is a World Heritage site because of buildings like the Royal Crescent AND because of the way the town's set into the natural landscape. It's beautiful. Too bad I'm a bad photographer with a mediocre camera so you can't really see it.

This part of the trail goes through a farm (several sections did), but these sheep wouldn't give me the time of day. Further along this path, I had to walk THROUGH the pasture with the horses. Big horses.

This is Sham Castle. It's just a wall built by Ralph Allen in the 1760s to improve the view from his property and give local stonemasons work.

This is the view as I was descending the Skyline Trail back into the city.

I hope this video isn't freaky. I can't view it before posting it (or after posting it). I took it near the beginning of the Trail.

New Favorite Activities in Bath

1. Use the free wi-fi at the Pig and Fiddle. Well, it's not really free, because we buy ice cream or hot chocolate or sausages to keep from being free loaders. But they've got a great corner seat from which to eat the sausages and use the Internet. And there's a cat.



2. Walk past the Jane Austen Centre. There's always a guy out on the doorstep in Regency dress. And he's contractually obligated to smile and tip his hat as you go past. And then you feel an overwhelming urge to get your hands on a copy of the 2007 version of Persuasion so you can watch Rupert Penry-Jones woo someone in Bath. And then you cry because the DVDs here play in the UK but not in the US, so if you spent your 20 pounds on a copy of the movie, you could only watch it while you were in the UK and then you'd have to leave it behind. And you're too cheap for that.



3. Wander in parks. We discovered the back way into town along the Kennett and Avon canal today via the Sydney Gardens. So lovely. [I have pictures, but my camera just died so I'll add them later.]



4. Eat lunch near the Abbey and watch the buskers perform. Today there was a man in a pink bathing suit type get up riding a unicycle and juggling knives. He was very engaging. And the singers are nice too.

Photos of Bath

Bath is beautiful and all but it rained all day yesterday and the day before which does not show Bath at its best. Almost all the buildings in Bath are made (or at least fronted) with white Bath stone. It glistens in the sun and turns dark and dreary in the rain. The sun came out right before I stepped into this Internet cafe (super-hip, jazz-playing Internet cafe), so I hope I'm not missing our one hour of sunshine this week.

The Royal Crescent

The Circus (a circle of row house built by John Wood)

Ironworks outside a rowhouse. These were used to snuff out the torches that link bearers carried in front of sedan chairs back in the day.

Unattractive picture of me walking into town from our flat.

Assembly Rooms (I don't know how I made the chandeliers glow like that, but I like it.)

Bath Abbey - This is a statue of Peter that was beheaded by iconoclasts. Instead of attaching a new head, they just carved a head out of his huge beard. He looks odd. Especially compared to the statue on the other side of the door.

My favorite detail on Bath Abbey--angels climbing the building. The bishop who had the abbey built had a dream about God sitting in heaven and angels ascending and descending ladders. His dream is carved on the front of the abbey.

Yesterday I ditched the Coordinatrix and AandA and visited the botanical gardens in the Royal Victoria Park. I had the gardens almost entirely to myself because of the rain. Beautiful!

This last photo is actually from the gardens in front of the Royal Crescent. Love the cabbage roses.

Bath

Renting our townhouse in Bath may be the smartest thing I have ever done. Ever. We are so happy to be in a flat where we can unpack for two weeks and use our kitchen to cook our own meals and bbq in our garden. The Coordinatrix and I are staying in the bedroom off the master bedroom, which is tiny but cute—vaulted ceiling and rounded doorways. I’m sleeping on the trundle bed, and the whole situation is very elementary school slumber party. And there are books in the house. Our living room has a bookcase full of books that I mostly don't want to read, but still . . . Books.

Yesterday we went to church and met lots of locals. One man came up to us and said, Hello, girlies. What’s your pleasure? And then we all stared at him because we had no idea what he was talking about or if this was a standard UK greeting. We never did manage to make the conversation normal. A woman with three children drove us home after our meetings and her little children were darling. The 9-year-old boy sounded like a tiny MP every time he spoke. Love the British accents.

Why Didn't I Bring Jeans?

We are in London and we are cold.

We've been having long days and late nights. We ventured into the city for Bastille Day in Paris and watched the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. We strategically positioned ourselves on the fringes of a crowd and had our path to the metro charted out before the fireworks began. We left a little early and got back to our hotel around midnight. Enzo drove us to Calais in the morning, we took a ferry to Dover, arrived in London by bus, and then the Coordinatrix and AandA and I took the tube to the city and got the last four tickets to Les Miserables (it seemed like the appropriate show to see considering it was the day after Bastille Day). I blame the two late nights for my extreme tiredness yesterday, which I believe is how I ended up in the men's restroom at the British Library. The man in there using the facilities seemed undisturbed by my appearance and assured me not to worry about it, but I was still a tiny bit mortified and decided I needed a nap before more adventuring in the city.

My two new London loves:
1. One pound (price, not weight) sushi from Sainsbury's (grocery store)--cheap and lovely (which is not to say that it's going to replace Thornton's chocolate as my treat of choice in England).
2. Mock the Week--A British TV show that reminds me of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me

We're going to hear a performance of the Mozart Requiem at St. Martin-in-the-Fields tonight and tomorrow we head to Bath. First, though, I have to find some warmer pants.

Visiting the Dead in Paris

The Coordinatrix and AandA went to Versailles with our tour group this afternoon, so after our city tour (a very interesting tour, since even more roads than expected were closed for the July 14th holiday), I headed out on my own. First, I found myself a bakery and purchased pain chocolat to fortify myself (ordered and paid for entirely in my bad French). Then I navigated myself to Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. Many famous people, including Chopin, Balzac, and Bizet (all of whom I accidentally wandered into) are buried there and it is an absolutely huge and beautiful cemetery. One of the things I found most striking about the cemetery was how much like a city it appears. From certain angles, the sepulchres look just like rows of houses, with beautifully decorated doors and stained glass windows on avenues lined with trees. On our tour, we've heard and seen so much about Napoleon's body parts being put on display and the body parts of saints being put on display that I periodically turn to the Coordinatrix and say, "Make a note: I don't want any of my body parts exhibited after my death." However, I wouldn't mind a nice little cemetery house. Here are some examples:

This one looks just like a shrine in a church. There's a painting on the back wall. Many also featured mosaics and gothic ornamentation. Very fancy.

I like the weeping women.

This is a man holding a face. I tried to find a name and dates, but the rest of the tomb just had some French about how the inhabitant had gone to a better place. Creepyfabulous.

This is a common symbol on graves signifying that time is fleeting. There are lots of great examples in Boston's cemeteries too. I love them.



This is one of the door designs I liked.

Tonight I think we're going to brave the crowds at the Eiffel Tower to see the fireworks.

Traveling Companions

So, I'm currently traveling with my friend from graduate school, the Coorindatrix, and two of her friends (who are also sisters), A and A. We've been on a package tour up to this point, but in two days we leave the tour to visit London by ourselves and then stay in Bath two weeks in a townhouse we rented. Our tour director's name is Patricia and she's French and she waxed absolutely poetic about the cows in Switzerland. She assured us that they were very happy and that is the secret to Swiss chocolate. She also believes in reincarnation, positive thoughts, speaking your mind, and Napoleon. She's a good time. The other travelers in our group are from India, Canada, Australia, America, and Texas. We only know a few people's names, so mostly (when not speaking directly to them), we refer to them as the Canadian Grandma, the Australians who hadn't seen snow (as compared to James and Margaret from Australia who had), the newlyweds, the father and daughter, etc. We don't feel bad about it, since everyone on the tour does it, and we're mostly referred to as the girls (or occasionally those cheeky Americans).

There are good and bad things about being on a package tour.

The good include
1. Having a driver so that we don't have to arrange transportation between cities or hotels. (It's also nice that our driver is Italian.) Our driver also transports our bags to and from our hotel rooms, so my back is not yet broken from lugging luggage.

2. Having a tour director and local guides who can easily direct us to the post office, the metro, the bank, the nearest bakery, etc. (especially when one stupidly forgot one's Paris guidebook in Utah).

3. Group tours at popular attractions=skipping lines.


The bad include
1. Traveling as a tourist and being treated like a group in many places.

2. The pace of our group activities is dictated by the SLOWEST person.


We have plenty of time away from the group, though, and mostly we've found our traveling companions amusing.

Happy Bastille Day!

We arrived in Paris this evening and in just the few hours the Coordinatrix and I spent out in the city tonight, I've realized the two things about Paris that have always been presented to me as fact are lies. Big lies.

I have always heard the following: 1. Paris is such a beautiful city and 2. the French are rude. Tonight we went to Sacre Coeur. We were only there a few minutes (long enough for me to very quietly crow about identifying the story in the stained glass windows as Joan of Arc) when clergy entered and started a service, so we sat down for half an hour to participate. From Sacre Couer we had a great view out over the city, but it's a really unattractive view. I'm sure the buildings themselves are lovely, but the city as a unit is really not. Especially since we just came from beautiful Luzern with its lake and mountains (and cable cars and church bells and cow bells).

AND we had three experiences with Parisians and they were all soooo positive. The first was when we were on a rather rough, loud metro car and two men moved so we could sit down together. Then we had a problem with our metro tickets. (I'd already had one problem with my tickets and just jumped the turnstile but no one was in that station.) The ticket machine wouldn't take our tickets that should have still been valid and the machine to purchase tickets was refusing both our credit cards and would only accept coins, which we didn't have. A very nice (and handsome) young man came and walked us through the machine and when he couldn't make it work either, he traded me bills for coins and then walked through the gate with us and gave us directions. We would have been completely stuck without him. And then when the Coordinatrix bought a crepe for her late dinner near our hotel, the guy serving her struck up a conversation with us and was so friendly. I love the Parisians!

Tomorrow is Bastille Day. In Paris! We already did a little celebrating at the Bastille monument where bands were playing and performers were twirling fire and playing in drum lines. I still miss Italy, but Paris is making a pretty good impression so far.

Here are some pictures from the past few days. One day I'll catch up with where we've been, what we've been doing, and with whom we've been traveling.


This is the view from our cable car, which traveled 10,000 feet up to the top of Mt. Titlis in Switzerland. I'll write about our trip up there later, but isn't it beautiful? (Much prettier than Paris.)

These are some of the paintings in the Mill Bridge. The paintings are from the 17th or 18th century (I need to do some fact checking, but there's no time!) and each one includes a skeleton (mEmento mori). There's a chapel in the middle of the bridge and it was built to protect the city from floods. Families have volunteered to care for the chapel and fill it with fresh flowers for the last 500 years.

This is not the Mill Bridge. But it's similar. It's further down the Reuss River (yards further, not miles further) and the water tower is original but the actual bridge burned up about 15 years ago. This is the rebuilt version.

My favorite treats in Liechtenstein. Breads shaped like animals. Wacky animals.

A view from the bridge in Innsbruck (very close to where we did laundry).

I Miss the Italians

We´re in Austria and after traveling in boisterous Italy, Innsbruck is a bit dull. Italy always felt like a party and we never had enough time to see and do (and eat) everything we wanted. I´m glad Kirsten and I are coming back.


We drove through the Dolomites in the morning and the green mountains and sparkly lakes and high-rise roads were all beautiful. We spent the afternoon in Innsbruck (where it is considerably colder than Italy and our sunburns look out of place) and next we stop briefly in Lichtenstein before spending two nights in Lucerne. We´re currently in a laundromat, having crossed town with a suitcase full of dirty clothes and navigating the "slug farm" as A2 called it--the result of rain earlier today.

Pictures!

Ah! Not enough time to post lots of pictures. Here are a few.

Here I am at the Leaning Tower. While we were there, the Chinese President (or ambassador?) who was here for the G8 Summit arrived with a GIANT motorcade. Pisa was the first place we ate pizza. A loved it. I preferred the pizza in Florence, where we had our very best food. I now adore prosciutto and I have a new and abiding love for eating smoked pig parts.

This is the baptistry (baptistery?) at Pisa. It also leans but in the opposite direction. This is where the amazing acoustics are.

Yesterday we went to Venice. I have my handy Rick Steves Italy guidebook with me, which is how we knew that if you have a backpack to check, you can skip the line at St. Mark's. I took one for the team and dragged my bag into the city, so we could check it. According to the guidebook, two people per bag check can enter the basilica ahead of the line, so we wanted to check A's bag too, but only backpacks are allowed to be left. When we hesitated, one of the bag check staff told us to go ahead, because the check was good for all four of us. And then a second employee piped up with, Stop reading, Rick Steves! It's bull! The basilica was gorgeous, we got in fast, and we paid to go into the treasury so we could see the relics (including a mummified hand) that the Venetians stole from Constantinople. And then we took off to the lagoon, avoiding most of the crowds most of the day. When we came back to Venice proper, we strolled through the backside, which was practically deserted. Most of the tourists stick to the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark's areas.

Here I am with the Coordinatrix and A on Burano, a fishing village in the Lagoon known for its lace work. So charming! The story goes that the houses are painted brightly so that when the men came home drunk, they could find their homes.



Last night I was walking through the hotel lobby, when an Italian man smiled and greeted me. I smiled too. I'm polite. Then he started walking with me, patted me on the back, and asked me how I was doing. It took me a minute to realize it was our driver, Enzo (it had been his day off and I didn't recognize him). Enzo (who I thought was named Ansel for a bit) is so nice to us and helps us off the bus and calls us Bella, actually all the Italian men call us that. It's very endearing.

p.s.

Check out the blog of the Coordinatrix (seriously, what did we do before apostrophes?) for more/different fascinating info about our trip.

When in Rome

It is a terrible shame that I canàt download photos on this computer (although maybe not, since my curls get bigger and fluffier as the day progresses) and also a shame that I canàt figure out where the apostrophe key is on the keyboard. Itàs even trickier than a German keyboard.

We are making a whirlwind tour of Italy this week. Highlights so far are as follows (Um, I cannot find the colon key either but picture one here)

1. Tour of the Vatican, Colosseum, and Roman Forum with Francesco, who bears a stiking resemblance to Ira Glass. Francesco knows everything in the world about art history and studied with the artist who restored the Sistine Chapel, so he was a fantastic guide. Also, did I mention that he looks just like Ira Glass? There is a new (to me) trend in tourism in which tour guides have little over the ear microphones and all the tour participants have boxes around their necks and ear pieces so they can hear the guide without being near him. It is fantastic. It made everyone on my tour look like bad CIA operatives and we could wander around the sites without sticking too close to the guide. (Although why wouldnàt you want to stay close to an Italian man (Italian is dead sexy) who looks like Ira Glass?)

2. I took us the secret slow way to the Cappuchin Crypt, but it is morbidly delightful, and we treated ourselves to gelato after the grueling march to the church where the bones are housed.

3. Love the Trevi Fountain.

4. Love the Baptistry in Pisa. The acoustics allow sound to linger for 10 seconds, so a single person can sing three notes and create chords and harmonies with himself. The guard demonstrated and it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

Having been a Humanities major is pretty much the best preparation in the world for a trip like this, since I already have memento mori and Medici and other important M words stored up in my brain. I studied Michelangeloàs Pieta in college, but I still wasnàt quite prepared for how gorgeous it is. Seeing it is overwhelming.

Florence and Venice later this week.

Ciao!

The Y on this keyboard is in the wrong place

Question:
Why does the Dusseldorf Airport have a dentist but not an Internet cafe?

Made it to Germany and our flight was met by masked doctors in lab coats extracting promises from us that we don't have swine flu.

Oh no, my expensive Internet minutes are gone . . .

Happy 4th of July

Yesterday I left Utah and flew to New York to have good times with my brother and sister-in-law before flying to Europe this evening. We visited the new Highline Park last night, where my brother was not properly impressed with the wooden deck chairs. Fortunately, my sister-in-law picked up the slack and demonstrated the appropriate enthusiasm. I also really like the wooden stadium-style benches that face a glass wall overlooking the street below. James and SK just fed me blueberry pancakes and now they're making me a list of places to eat in Paris so that I don't miss out on delicious baskets of sausages. They're good like that.