Bath

Road trip!  Spent the weekend in Bath with my good friends E&J.  It is hard to believe that we only left Friday after work as we saw so much in so little time.  E&J are also expats but they have recently bought cars so we were on the road.  Sure, we don't really know ALL the driving rules, but we know a bit and what we don't know the on-board navigation system more or less makes up for.  I think the biggest problem is trying to work out where you can and can't park.  The Brits do like to paint a lot of lines onto the road...I think they are supposed to explain things?  They just look like a big old mess to me!

Anyway, we drove out to Bath on Friday after work and enjoyed a weekend of pubs, Christmas markets, a Tour of the Roman Bath, and a bit more shopping.  No wonder I'm tired!  The Christmas Markets (think outdoor craft fair but cute little wooden boths instead of ugly convention centre draping) were so busy with people it was hard to even walk around. Through perseverence I managed to pretty much start and complete all required Christmas shopping.  The Roman Bath was very interesting to tour.  You can't go in the water at the historic location (there is a shiny new spa for that) -  I may or may not have quickly slipped my hand in to see how hot the water was anyway and it may or may not be about the temperature of a warm bath.  The water has a really high copper content so it has a vaguely turquoise colour to it...although the picture above makes it look more like the slough at the farm!  I have to say that the Romans were really such amazing engineers.  The system they put in place to collect, clarify, and deliver the water was really impressive. Plus, they had sauna/steam room areas where they built a false floor over a small vault which allowed them to circulate hot air from the furnace room to produce what is surely the first under floor heating system!

On the way home we stopped at Stonehenge.  I'm struggling with how to describe it.  Driving up to it, it doesn't seem as big as you might expect but I think it is a bit of an optical illusion because when you are standing next to them - or at least as close as you can get - they really are enormous.  The stone was quarried in Wales and then moved up river to where they are now.  They don't really have any explanation of how the stones got from the river bank, up a really large hill, inland about a mile, and then hoisted into place.  A full 1/3 of the stones are actually underground.  They also don't really know what they were used for...but there are lots of theories.  It is all quite deliberate so there must have been some reason.  I don't think it was to entertain the sheep who graze in the field surrounding the stones...they don't seem particularly interested.

I think the highlight of the trip was actually all the great little pubs we nicked into for a pint.  The local brewery, Abbey Ales (http://www.abbeyales.co.uk/index.asp), brews an excellent pint and they are all hand pulled from the keg.  Just what I have been looking for since I moved here!  My favourite pub was the Salamander (http://www.bathales.com/our-pubs/pid/the-salamander/) where we seemed to wander into some sort of sing-a-long.  I didn't know very many of the songs!  The most interesting one was what I recognized as Raffi's 'Down by the Bay' except in the West Country it is 'Down by the Sea' and it is definitely NOT a children's song.  Unless you are trying to teach your children swear words.