Wednesday

Hello friends,
I was right - the day turned out sunny and pleasant, though it was iffy there for a while - cloudy and a drip of rain once or twice.  We headed into Bath and walked through the city; we started at a particular store that Martha and Larry wanted to see, stopping at the post office for them to change back some Euros from a previous trip first.  Then we walked to the King's Circus, which is a big architectural circle of apartments with some pretty interesting features, including acorn structures on top of the buildings, and took some photos there.  I have  a panoramic feature on my camera that works pretty well, so I played with that for a few minutes.  We next walked to the Crescent; again the panoramic photos.  There were two ladies standing by the wrought iron gate, talking and smoking.  I got them in a few photos, then decided to move over next to them to get them out of the photos (I had been waiting for them to move on).    Of course right when I moved, they started walking away in a direction that pretty much guaranteed they would be in all future photos for the next several minutes.  I gave up. 

We had walked by the Jane Austen Centre on the way to the Circus and headed back there.  Martha and Larry decided to go to a park nearby, because they were not interested, but our family went in and had a little guided tour talking about Jane Austen and her family, her time in Bath and its influence on her novels, etc.  The rest of the tour was self-guided, with a short video hosted by the actor who played Wickham in the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice.  I had read P&P to the girls a few months ago, and we had watched the BBC miniseries, so they knew what was going on.  Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite "comfort" books, like a blankie if I'm not feeling well, or just to read its familiar funny scenes.  There was a place to try on period costumes (which we did not do) and to write with quill pens, which both the girls enjoyed enough that we bought some nib pens in the gift shop.  They also had some attractive little editions of Austen's writings for sale, and I admit I bought a couple of them.  I haven't ready any books of hers other than P&P, and I was inspired to do so after this visit, and see what they have to do with Bath as well.

After that, we found Martha and Larry in the park, and all set off to find some lunch.  There was some hemming and hawing - it's always tricky to synchronize the agendas of 6 people - so we split up again and they went for fish and chips, and we went to a little hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop called Intermezzo Express, where they made sandwiches to order (rather like Subway, but much better, and with cooler accents).  The bread was amazing. We sat on benches in the square to eat and met up with M&L again after the appointed time, and walked on.

On our way to the Roman baths, we stopped in a few shops including a candy store that was AMAZING.  The kids wanted Chocolate Frogs (Harry Potter) so we got those, and some fudge.  There was also a discount shop called Works that had books, Terry Prachett audiobooks, office supplies, toys, etc. 

We got to the Baths around 2:45 and paid the admission.  It has an audio tour given through a device rather like a telephone handpiece; you dial in the number of the exhibit you want (they are listed on the signs) and listen, or not, as you like.  I thought it was good, but it effectively prevented us from talking to each other because we were listening to the dial up guides, and after a while it got to be a bit much for me because all i wanted to do was sit down.  It was also very crowded after a while, and the masses of people listening to the audio tour and not paying attention to where they were going, all packed by the exhibits, got to be too much for me.  I think there comes a point by which time one's brain has seen enough and can't process any more.  I hit that place about 2/3 through the Baths.  So all that remained was to wait for the rest to catch up (I walked ahead slowly with the girls, who tuned in here and there to find out about the exhibits).  We spend about 2 minutes in the gift shop, which was quite nice but I was done, then walked out to the main plaza again.  We made an executive decision to go back to the boat, because we were all pretty tired.  We can moor here until this afternoon (48 hours) so we will go back into Bath again today and do a few more things.

As we walked home we passed a place that we had seen two very pretty snails the day before.  Giselle and Genevieve didn't recognize the path, and I said, "It's where we saw the snails yesterday."  They vaguely recalled it, and then Giselle said something about "Snails are ugly; snakes are cool."    I said, "Watch out - now you've made them angry and they are going to come swarming after us - amble for your life!"  Later on, we found some blackberry bushes along the canal and kept stopping to pick some.   Giselle (who i think wanted to get home) said, "I think the snails are catching up with us...."

I had bought some minced (ground) beef at the grocery store the other day, and so I made burgers for dinner.  One end of the package was frozen (efficient tiny fridge, a bit too cool) so I just "scrunchled" it loose.  I had enough thawed to make 6 small burgers.  We also had some berries from the store, and that we had picked.

M, L and T went "for a walk" after dinner.  M&L went to the grocery store, I think.  The girls and I stayed in the boat, which was idling to charge the battery.  I couldn't believe they wanted to go for a walk - I thought my legs were going to fall off....  I transferred some photos from my camera to a USB drive (which took longer than I thought) and then my nifty galifty internet hotspot refused to work, so I went to bed.  It seems to be working this morning, so here's hoping.  I woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep which has been typical for me this vacation.  There is a lot of foot and bike traffic on the tow path by the canal which is gravel, so one can hear passers by quite easily.  I think Ill get up and have some breakfast.  

Have a good day, all.  :)
wendy