Bath: It's Wet! (It was raining)

Anyone who's ever read Jane Austin knows of Bath.  It's where gentile Georgian ladies in empire-waisted gowns go to take the cure, sip sulfur water for their health, and spend their evenings dancing at balls and hunting for wealthy husbands.  That, and the fact that it is named for its famed Roman baths was all that I knew of Bath before my weekend getaway from London.  As a history geek and Classicist, that in itself was enough of a draw.  But my sister-in-law put it on my must-see list, so I found myself on train, in the rain (which I thought was appropriate, if less than picturesque), on my way to Bath. 

From London, Bath is only 90 or so minutes away by train, and you pass though oodles of picturesque countryside on the way there.  I only had the day to spend, so I intended to hit the highlights and ended up wishing for more time in this lovely, picturesque little town.  Unlike London, Bath is easily walkable and accessible on foot, and after a quick walkabout to orient myself, I stopped  at Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths which are catty-corner from one another in the same square.

I am fascinated by cathedrals and always stop in when I see one here in Europe.  Like many other English cathedrals, Bath Abbey has an incredible history.  The site has been occupied by Christian religious institutions since the 7th century A.D, and may have been built atop earlier pagan temples.  The first crowned "King of the English," King Edgar, was crowned here in 973, and the current construction was built in the 12th and 16th centuries and restored in the 18th century.  Don't miss the angels ascending Jacob's Ladder to heaven on the west front.  Legend has it that a 15th century Bishop of Bath, Oliver King, had it constructed after he visited the Abbey, found its monks more interested in earthly delights than the kingdom of heaven, and had a dream of the Heavenly Host ascending and descending a ladder.

Just around the corner from the Abbey is the famous Roman Baths, and you can smell the sulfur and minerals from the moment you walk into the modern construction on street level.  The ancient baths themselves are below ground, and still run with hot, bubbling, steaming mineral waters, millennia after their discovery, and the bath's construction in the 1st century A.D. by the occupying Romans.  During Roman rule, Bath was known as Aquae Sulis "the waters of Sulis" and dedicated to the Celtic goddess, Sulis, a mother-goddess equated by the Romans to Minerva.  The Museum provides an excellent audio-guide of the baths and the Roman artifacts found at the site,  and you can even taste the sulfur-y waters at the end of your tour.

Steam and bubbles rising from the surface of the water at Bath

After my tour of the baths, I stopped by Sally Lunn's for tea.  Just a couple of streets away from Bath Abbey, Sally Lunn's flowery window boxes and bright red sign can't be missed, and my sister-in-law had told me that it was her favorite place to eat in all of England.  I was sold.  I had the traditional tea with Sally Lunn's famous bun, reportedly a 17th century recipe, served with jam and clotted cream.  If you're like me, the words clotted cream are a bit off-putting to say the least.  It sounds revolting, and possibly unsafe.  But don't let the name throw you off. Clotted cream is quite possibly the single best gastronomic invention of mankind.  It is super rich and creamy and tastes as if butter, whipped cream, and frosting were having a delicious menage-a-trots in your mouth.  Seriously, it's sinful.  I only have a picture of the aftermath, because I was too busy having a flavor orgasm in the moment.  It's that good!

After tea, I made my way to the Royal Crescent, a semi-circular row of houses at the heart of Georgian Bath.  Number 1 is a museum, furnished and maintained in the manner of an 18th century resident.  Nearby, you can tour the Bath Assembly Rooms and Fashion Museum, where the fashionable Georgian ladies and gentlemen (Jane Austen and Charles Dickens among them) would gather for balls, concerts, and gambling.

On the way back to the train, I stopped at Pulteney Bridge, spanning the Avon River, and lined with shops.  You can take a one-hour river tour here, but I (wet and tired) declined the opportunity, and took the train back to London.

A Foodie's Paradise and a Macabre Compendium of British History: Borough Market and Westminster Abbey

This week, I thought I'd write about a couple of places where I couldn't take pictures (either because of the masses of people or because photography was not permitted).

Borough Market:
Borough Market is a foodie's heaven.  If you can't buy it, you probably shouldn't eat it, but some things that you can buy you may not want to.  Borough Market is several blocks of homemade, fresh-cooked, just slaughtered, organic or otherwise just plain good food.
It's best to go when hungry because there are tons of vendors cooking food that smells amazing, and even if they can't entice you to buy something, you will be plied with plenty of samples of olives, cheese, bread and jam, honey, fresh-squeezed juice and a thousand other things at all the stalls.  After slurping down a cup of potato leek soup, I went back for seconds of fish stew and then grazed at the rest of the stalls until I couldn't physically eat any more.  SO GOOD!

I'm fairly sure that I came across every type of meat product a person could possibly imagine (and some you that you might not).  At the fish stalls, whole fish stare at you with glassy eyes next to rows of squid with their tentacles dangling over the side of the table like decorative fringe.  At the meat stalls, not only can you buy fresh, bloody hunks of beef, lamb, veal, chicken etc., but also whole, un-plucked duck, pheasant, or rabbit which hang neatly by their necks in rows on the wall.  I also saw a pig's head complete with mouth ajar and lolling tongue.  I'm not sure whether this was for sale or merely for decorative effect. :)  I also found a booth selling exotic meats, just in case you're in the mood for a little kangaroo or ostrich.

In addition to these, you can find heaps of fresh vegetables, pies, sweets, breads, herbed fresh-churned butter, and and a host of other things I can't remember anymore.  I didn't even see it all.
On the way out, I found a chocolaterie and had a European-style hot chocolate, which was nothing like the watery, slightly chocolatey hot milk you get in the States.  I also bought some chocolates (overpriced, but worth the splurge) that would make your toes curl up.  It's that good.  Screw Hershey's chocolate bars.  WE have no idea how to do chocolate.



Westminster Abbey:
Oh how I wish that you could take pictures inside Westminster Abbey!  There is simply more to see inside than any one person could see in a single visit, and more to be remembered than can be remembered.

A first impression of Westminster Abbey is that it is OVERWHELMING.  It's as if, in the many centuries since it's construction began, it was decided that there should not even be an inch of wasted space.  And there's not.  Every niche, every corner chapel and tomb, is liberally gilded and carved, and tombs, dedications, and sculpture cover the walls and floor with not a hand's breadth between them.  Everywhere you look you are confronted by frolicking cherubs, saints frozen in scenes of divine rapture, noblemen and women lying serenely on coffins, their hands clasped in perpetual prayer.  In a more sinister vision, a man shelters his terrified wife as the skeletal menace of the Grim Reaper stalks her with sickle raised to strike.  I remembered a book I had read in which all the sculpture in a cathedral come to life, move about, and complain of their neighbors and the terrible things they had seen in their hundreds of years.  I imagined what it might be like if that scene happened here.  It would be earsplitting, a cacophony, as there are probably more sculptures than tourists.

I've seen the tombs of centuries of England's kings and queens from St. Edward the Confessor, who began construction of the Abbey sometime between 1045 and 1050, to Henry VII, entombed with his wife behind bronze gates and with his family clustered about him.  Elizabeth I and Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) are buried side-by-side with a inscription about sisterly devotion (although they were political rivals and had no great love for one other in life).  I wonder what Mary would think if she knew that only her sister Elizabeth merited an effigy on their tomb.  I doubt that she would be pleased.

As you walk though the chapels, you tread upon the memorials of hundreds of people who have been interred beneath the floors of Westminster Abbey.  I wonder if they would have chosen that particular honor if they had known that millions of tourists would shuffle over their monuments every day without a glance, until the stone was worn away and the inscriptions unreadable.

On the opposite side of the high altar is the Poet's Corner with the monuments, effigies, and memorials of dozens of English writers such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austin, the Bronte sisters, and Charles Dickens.  I was also surprised to learn that among the esteemed men to be buried at Westminster Abbey were Sir Issac Newton and Charles Darwin.  It's easy to get overly sentimental when writing about the Abbey.  It's like a time capsule of all of English history, all at once, where an 11th century king can be found under the same roof as an unknown WWII soldier.

Throughout the two hours that I spent at the cathedral, my eyes (exhausted from the constant assault of images and from reading hundreds of inscriptions) were drawn again and again to the simple beauty of the Gothic vaulted ceiling high above me.  Its elegance kept me grounded amongst the macabre spectacle of the tombs.   From a historical perspective, there is little in London to compete with Westminster Abbey.  It is impressive!

Pictures: Borough Market, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park

Awkward Transitions: Cattle Cars, Bipolar Heaters, and Electricity Switches

Since I've finished all of my readings for tonight and I know that I'm going to the library tomorrow to be productive and research for my dissertation, I thought I'd write a bit because I haven't in a while.  Even if no one else reads my blog, I know that my mother, sister-in-law, aunt, and cousin do, and it's fun to write something trivial when I know that most everything else I write this year with be overly analyzed, picked apart, and criticized.  So here's some random things that have been on my mind in the month that I've lived here in London.

Public Transportation is fantastic!  If there was one European innovation that I could bring back with me to the States to make life infinitely better there, it would be a really efficient, easy-to-follow, nation-wide public transportation system.  Now, I know you might be thinking about how much you love the freedom of being able to hop into your car and drive right up to the door of wherever it is you're going, or even drive across an entire country without changing cars, buying tickets, or hauling your baggage around.  Americans love our independence and freedom, and mass transportation just seems a little herd-like to us.  But just imagine yourself in that #Freedom car in the middle of rush hour traffic, yelling along to the radio to distract yourself from the fact that you've moved five feet in half an hour, then unexpectedly braking for the idiot who just pulled right out in front of you while ignoring the idiots who are now honking behind you for braking, all while trying to read confusing road signs that point off in contradictory directions in the middle of downtown Dallas.  Yeah, Ive been there too.

 The Tube has none of that.  Instead, you see calm commuters listening to music, reading a book or a newspaper, or working on a puzzle.  I've seen parents smiling while watching their toddler play peek-a-boo with his neighbors and a man helping his little boy read a book aloud on his way home from school.  Sounds idyllic, right?  Lots of people sleep.  I'll never understand Londoners' capacity to sleep on the Tube and wake up with perfect timing at their own stop.  I watched a guy the other day, dead asleep, his head propped back against the window, mouth hanging open, snoring very softly and not even twitching as each stop was announced and people entered and exited the carriage.  I thought for sure this guy was in trouble and he'd find himself rudely awakened at the final destination having missed his own stop long ago.  But, when the time came, as if to an alarm, the guy jerked awake as his stop was announced, picked up his backpack and and waited for the doors to open.  It's like magic.  It's some weird form of British superpower.  I never fail to be mesmerized.

Traveling by Tube is, of course, not always perfect.  Sometimes a line shuts down, or the trains are delayed, or you find yourself crammed between 10 people and staring at a stranger's armpit, but mostly its relaxing not to have to worry about getting from place to place.  You can relax, listen to music, and trust that the Tube will get you (most of the way) there, (pretty much) on time and in (relative) comfort.  Every time I take it, I wonder why we can't figure this out.

The only exception I've seen to the niftiness and convenience of public transportation (or really just getting around London in general) is the lack of accommodation for the elderly and people with babies.  The other day I saw a VERY elderly lady, her arms loaded with grocery sacks, bent over at a nearly 90 degree angle from osteoporosis, trying slowly and torturously to climb long flights of stairs at a Tube station with no escalators.  A man stopped her and asked if she'd like some help, but she said she was fine.  She was huffing and puffing by the time she reached the top.  It was painful to watch.   I've also seen women have to ask for help to carry baby strollers up and down flights of stairs or miss a train because there was no room for the stroller to fit.  So, maybe more elevators or ramps would be useful.  But, all in all, I'd happily trade my car for their Tube system, busses, and trains.  Oh, also there are cheap budget airlines in abundance.  So there's that.

Electricity is weird in the UK.  When I first got here to my apartments, I immediately plugged in my computer using my outlet converters and was dismayed when I couldn't get the thing to charge.   I unplugged it and plugged it back in, changed the convertor, and checked the connections.  Nothing.  Nada.  Then I realized that beside every outlet there's an on/off switch, like a light switch, which activates the electricity for the outlet.  It makes sense from an energy-saving point of view, but it's a completely foreign concept to an American.  And I didn't catch on to it quickly.  A week later I bought a new hair dryer, plugged it in and switched it on.  Silence.  I banged on it (like you do...).  I tried a few more switches.  Nothing.  I unplugged it and replugged it.  I cursed at it.  It finally dawned on me and I felt like a moron.  Oh yeah...  Ditto for the stove and appliances in the kitchen.

Heaters in England are illogical and infuriating.  As far as I can figure out, the heater only works for an hour at a time.  To run it, you flip on the electricity to the outlet, press the button on the front, and get an hour of heat which you can adjust warmer or cooler.  It goes off after an hour.  Your room slowly gets colder again just gradually and insidiously enough that death by hypothermia could potentially take you by surprise, and you have to hit the button again.  Mornings are worse.  There you are in your comfy pocket of body-heated duvet mound, snug and asleep.  Then the alarm goes off and you have to get up to take a shower.  The ambient temperature of the room is subarctic, and the heater is all the way across the room.  You screw up your courage and lunge toward it, the frigid air like a sudden polar plunge into a Nordic lake.  You hit the button and dive back under the covers until the tetanus-like shuttering stops and it's finally warm enough to take a shower without risking frostbite.  It isn't even fully winter yet.   At the moment, my classes are freezing, but I've been told that when it gets really cold, they finally turn the heaters on at campus and then we'll all be sweltering.  Possibly for an hour at a time.

Finally, after a month here in London,  I must be starting to look like I know what I'm doing.  I can't tell you how many times in the last few weeks I've been stopped by someone asking for directions who then seems surprised when I start speaking in a very obviously not British accent.  It's fun.  Especially when I know the answer.