We were on the road soon after 8:30 with the plan to drop off bags at our Bath B&B, then to head to Hertz to drop off the car, just 1.7 miles from the B&B. Thankfully our drive was smooth and timing worked out perfectly (I arranged all these little connections intentionally but wasn't entirely sure they were realistic-- so far so good!). We were able to walk from the car rental place to the Crescent-- the iconic Bath area, then to the Circus (which is just a circle of row houses, very posh with lovely 200 yr-old trees in the center (on our guided walk we learned it's the exact same size as Stonehenge)-- then to the Abbey. We found out there was indeed an Evensong service at "hawf-pawst 5," so we had a few hours to knock around the beautiful city before our free 2pm walking tour! We had lunch at Malloy's Irish Pub (2 burgers for $7.45-lbs!) hearing later on our tour that years ago it was a Presbyterian Church!
Here are a few photos from our walking tour with our cute English man whose name I can't remember, but I shall forever remember him as Nigel.
From the tour we hit a few shops and rested a bit at Starbucks. Soon after 5 we headed to the beautiful Bath Abbey (basically a cathedral) and got right in and actually sat in the front row, under the rector's watchful eye.
Sat next to a nice couple from Perth who invited us to their home anytime! Sweet people; he went on and on about the evangelistic opportunities these cathedrals have... The Evensong choir was a sweet group of Welsh folks from several churches... we missed the choirboys of King's College, Oxford! But it was a nice service and a great way to take in the glorious space.
So we went from the sacred to the sacrilegious-- as in right to the Roman baths which is essentially a temple to the goddess Minerva and other Roman deities. It's actually very interesting and cool to think how very old those stones are, and the water, for that matter. (No, we didn't drink it!) Nor do we plan to actually do the SPA thing-- though a massage sounds pretty good considering we walked about 10 hours today! Thus a dinner at a Thai place hit the spot and we were finally back in our room after 10pm!
A bonus for tonight-- with the few Facebook posts I made, my long-time friend from Calvary Baptist Huntington Beach days, Janet Agnell Thompson, messaged me that she and her sis Kerry are here in Bath, too. We actually stood in front of the hospital were Kerry is receiving special treatment-- heard about it on our walking tour! It was fun to connect via the web and to realize our B&B's are just around the corner from each other, so we plan to see each other tomorrow! What fun!
We did so much of Bath tonight, that we need to figure out what's the best thing to do tomorrow. Just enjoy it some more? Go on a bus tour somewhere? Museums? (The Jane Austen one doesn't get such rave reviews-- we did see the highlighted spots on our tour today)... so I'd better get to planning! Ken gets to pick from both our cameras today (actually, there are 4 cameras including what we take on our phones-- ridiculous!), and we need to post yesterday's pics, too! Sometimes I feel like this is homework, but we are already so glad to have this little journal of the highlights. Glad we can share it with all of you, too. Ken saw there were almost 800 hits on this silly thing!
No comments:
Post a Comment