Day Seventeen: Bath

Good morning again, Cardiff! It's so good to see you dressed up in blue skies and sunshine again today! 

Up, cleaned, dressed, breakfasted, and on the road by 7:30. 

Lets rock this day. 

After a few hours of driving (our first drive of the day is always at least an hour long; all these long beautiful drives make for GREAT journal time), we arrived at the city of Bradford-upon-Avon. 

That's right, Bradford.  (my mother's mother's maiden name). I asked Tom if the names of this town tied into Bradford family history, but after he stopped and thought hard about it, he said he actually didnt know. So, I wasn't able to learn anything about if my ancestors walked those pathways too, but I am so far the first in my group to stump Tom! Seriously, we're keeping track.

We went to a very old Saxon church first. It was tiny, no more than twenty by thirty-five feet, but it was tall. The walls were incredibly thick (Saxons didnt build anything they couldn't defend from an attacking army), so that made it even smaller on the inside. It was also incredibly plain; almost no windows on the whole tall building, the only decorations being two stone angels above the main arch and a partial cross with genuine Celtic border engravings. While it was certainly one of the least elegant buildings I've seen here, its still standing very strong, despite generations of the church being used as a barn. Not bad for a building from 1039, eh? 

The next place we went was Lacock abbey. This building had been renovated hundreds of years ago to become a nunnery, then a family home. But it still looked like an abbey. It had those lovely flourished windows looking out into the courtyard with fanned (decorated carved) ceilings.

 We walked into many of the large stone side rooms along the square and found a large sign showing a bunch of spots there in the square's rooms where the first two Harry Potter movies were filmed in! Super cool! We also started a new habit, completely by accident the first few times. The habit now is that when we find those l lovely empty stone rooms, if they are big enough, we start singing some plainchant with four or five harmonies (plainchant is like, um, like really pretty songs that I guess monks would sing in cathedrals, but we just stick to really solid chords and simple slow progressions). The hope is that if we get a big and empty enough room, then it will really echo. We once held a chord long enough that the rest of the group heard it across the courtyard! And we are all very familiar with music theory, we click right in tune. Not bad at all, I say :)

We then took a tour of the house. It was really cool! It was a very efficient and well run house, with a big room for every task the house had. They had a ton of artifacts from the day that they filled every room with, and they were magnificent. The statues throughout the house were especially great! The family that lived here often commissioned statues, carvings, and paintings of things they thought were important. In great hall, for example, all the walls were covered with statues of the great kings and bishops that they revered, as well as some of their most important symbols, such as mythology (prtrayed as a great minatour), death (as a great formidable skeleton with hood, flames, and scythe), and blame (as a scapegoat being sent away. About 90 years ago, an American had put a sugar cube on the goats nose, but the people running the house liked that so much that they have kept up that tradition ever since). They were absolutely gorgeous carvings. 

After we left the abbey, we went and explored the darling little surrounding village. We happened upon a cute little bakery, where we got looking at the homemade delicacies. We found some baskets of big rounds of fresh baked bread. Lydia and I were feeling pretty good about splitting one of the giant loaves, so we snagged a big round of olive and rosemary and walked out happily. Now, the bread was pretty dang fantastic, but i was super surprised when I took my first bite and found that the 'Olive' in 'olive and rosemary' meant big diced black olives mixed all in the dough. I'm glad I really like olives, because it was a lovely twist, but I feel bad for any other who gets so surprised and does not share my love for those edible black pearls. 

After we left the bakery, we ran into Tom, who led us to see the house that had been used in the Harry Potter movies as Godrics Hollow (aka, the house where Harry had been born and where his parents died). Fake or not, it was fun :) After we took some pictures of the house, Tom led us back to the van. 

After a little drive, we arrived at the city of Bath. Bath is a town where the sacred Roman baths were uncovered a few hundred years ago. We were able to learn much about Roman culture by the things that these Romans in Britain had worked hard to implement into their new home far from Rome. 

Before we ever saw the baths, though, we went on another major forced march through the huge city. We started at the Bath Cathedral (proudly displaying it's unique enormous depiction of Jacob's ladder along the West exterior), then to the Square with the Queen's Obelisk (the first area in England to build a sidewalk so that couples could go for their much-desired walks every day together without getting really muddy), the Circus (which was a huge roundabout completely surrounded by flats that were all in a big circle. Look it up online, it was pretty neat!), the Royal Crescent (another curved section of multi-million dollar flats that overlooked a scenic field), a haha (yes gentle reader, a haha is a real thing. It is a strip of tall grass with a trench in a field to keep animals from getting to the other side and so onlookers could only see what they thought was a big field of tall grass) and finally ended up on the other side of town in front of the Bath Assembly Hall. 

We all went in to see the great victorian-era building. This is where all of the major balls were held, back in the day. And it was indeed beautiful and big enough for them. Lydia and I took the opportunity to dance a waltz through the most beautiful ballrooms there, as we had to do what they were made to be used for. 

A huge fashion museum was on display downstairs, so we went to that too. There were some absolutely gorgeous gowns. I actually took a few photos of some simple old dresses that l'm secretly hoping my wizard-seamstress-sister could put together for me....wink wink. 

They had a lot of the outfits that had won major fashion competitions there, and I must be honest...I laughed at almost all of them. Seriously, I wouldn't be caught dead in 98% of the things they put on those poor models. You think I'm kidding, but I'd seriously call in every favor I have with the people upstairs to come back to life long enough to change into a burlap sack before anyone came for my body. Gag. 

They did have a room downstairs with some really big poofy dresses that you could wear over your clothes. So, with Lydia's aid, I synched myself up in a corset, put on a gigantic hoop skirt, and finally donned my black dress and bonnet. Oh, why was I not born 200 years ago?...

Oh yeah, haha, see day Twenty-two to find out why I realized I was just kididng about that last question (yes, I'm writing these out of order, but you shouldn't be able to tell if I do it just right). 

After I modernized myself again, I helped Lydia into my corset and dress, as well as Allie and Abbey. it was great fun. 

After we left the Assembly Hall, Tom said we had three hours to go wherever we wanted and then we were to meet back at the west wall of the cathedral at 6pm. So me and a few others went back down the streets to where we had passed the Jane Austen museum.

This was in the flat where she had lived, which was super cool. The problem was, I have never read any of her books, and have only ever seen a few of the movies that have been done about her. So while I really REALLY appreciate what I have seen, I didn't feel like I was an Austen fan enough to pay the eight pounds to go through the museum. Sorry Austen fans, you'll just have to go see it yourself instead, yeah? Yeah. I did pick up some cool stuff in a nearby Jane Austen trinket shop though, so I'm not all bad. 

When we left the museum, it was just me, Abbey, and Miya. Now, Abbey's birthday is on Monday, and I have been trying to find something that she really likes to get for her birthday, but I haven't seen anything so far. The three of us walked along the many streets of fun shops, happily window shopping all along our merry way, when suddenly, Abby ran into one of the open shop doors. Miya and I followed her into the fun little clothes store and watched her gawk at the fun cardigans and shirts that she saw. This got my hopes up; maybe I could get her something here! But she had to pick something first, and I didn't think she really liked just any one thing enough to buy it. 

That was, until she saw the dress. It was a fun little gray and red dress with an intricate owl pattern all over. She turned it over and over in her hands, held it up to her, looked at a mirror, turned it over again, and would have kept doing so if Miya and I hadn't instructed her to go upstairs and try it on. She picked up a few other dresses on her way up, but I could tell that she had found a favorite. 

She tried on a few of the other dresses first, finding flaws in each of them. When she tried on the owl dress though, it was a perfect fit. She was so excited about it that I couldn't stop grinning. When she went back into the changing room that Miya and I were sitting just outside of, we started mouthing to each other about possibly getting the dress for her secretly. It was twenty pounds, but I thought if the other girls would go in on it with us, then it would be perfect. 

So, my mission began. Miya's job was to convince Abbey that she shouldn't get the dress, as Abbey kept going back and forth about if it was something she should actually buy. I made the announcement that I was going to find a trash bin for my apple core (isn't it funny that as soon as you get to the core, your once-scrumptious bit of fruit now becomes gross soggy trash?). I went downstairs and looked through the rack where Abbey had picked up the dress. While the same style of dresses were there, there were no more red owl dresses. I went over to the counter and asked the lady if she had any others in the back, but I already knew the answer would be no. well, I wasn't real disappointed when she said no, then. I explained that I was trying to buy the dress as a Birthday present for my friend who was trying on the dress upstairs. The lady seemed to get excited about this and said that she would help me out so Abbey wouldn't know and let me pay for the dress right there. After she handed me an empty bag to put the dress in later, I thanked her and went back upstairs while I waited for Abbey to finish. Once she did, she came out with a big stack of dresses, her favorite still on the top. Miya had successfully convinced her that she could keep buying ice cream frequently if she didn't get the dress. I offered to put away the dresses for her, but Abbey said that she would just take them downstairs to the counter. We walked back down and she handed them over. I was so happy when the lady at the counter casually thanked Abbey, took the dresses, stuck them all under the counter as she watched the two girls walk out the door. Then, without saying a word, she pulled out the right dress, folded it up, and slid it over to me, where I had my backpack already open. I put it in my bag and had it closed up in two seconds, and walked out only a minute behind the other girls. Mission accomplished. 

We all walked back across town to the Cathedral where we waited for 6 o'clock to roll around. In the mean time, I remember sitting in front of the grand Bath Museum in the shade of the shops, right by the beautiful Cathedral, while I listened to a pretty dang good guitarist earn his way. That was a very happy moment. 

The reason why we all decided to meet at 6 is because the nearby Pastie shop closes at 6:30, which means that at 6:10, all of their unsold pasties are super discounted, like half price, so that they don't have to throw them away!! Tom says this shop is better than West Cornwall, so I was excited to give it a go. To my delight, they had a pork and applesauce, so I got that one. Unfortunately, it wasnt nearly as good as that first one I had, so the hunt is still on for a Pastie to beat my first. 

After we finished munching on our fun dinner (did I mention I really do love pasties?) we all headed over to the big Bath museum. They had restored the remains of the sacred pool built by the Romans and had built a huge museum that covered the massive ruins of the other small baths. Each bath was for a different purpose. Some were meant to be super cold, others were to sit in with just your head barely above the water. Some were for healing, some for love, and some were just there to throw curses in. Seriously, if someone wronged you, you wrote on a small tablet of lead something terrible you hoped the gods would do to that person, then fold up the lead and throw it into the pool so that the gods would be able to read it, since it was connected to the sacred pool. They had some actors there too to re-enact what some of the different people's jobs were there. 

When the priest asked us where we were from, we looked at each other for a bit, and then just told him that we were from the future. No big deal. 

I thought it was really funny when I started looking at the statues of the greatest roman soldiers that surrounded the pool a floor above. The statue of Julius Caesar looked different somehow. As I listened to the guide, he was just explaning that about twenty years ago, one of the ladies who worked there was making her normal inventory of the grounds, when she happened to notice that Julius Caesar was gone. The looked everywhere for him, but there was no evidence that his statue had been stolen from the building. Later, they looked down into the pool below and found Caesar in lots of little pieces. Apparently, Someone had taken it upon themselves to break into the museum, somehow throw the massive statue into the pool, and then get out of the museum without getting caught.

 I just thought it was funny that someone today has such a huge grudge against Caesar. 

It was a long drive home, which I was super great with. We got home at about ten-ish, so I got things ready for the next day, did all of my usual pre-bed stuff, and then hit the hay... 

...for the last time as a twenty-year-old, mwahaha!