-Bath-
This is one of my very own photos. I know you know this is already going to be a great place.
Oh the town of Bath, England! Also known as Bath Spa.
The guy at the bar tries to explain to us, and we finally figure out it's just a baked potato. Oh.We order two waters, and get the strangest and most amused look from this guy taking our order.
"Water?"
"Yep."
"Ha. Okay."
We should drink beer. Everyone drinks beer like it is water here. I wish I could if the smell didn't make me gag. Especially the smell of Guinness. That is a nasty one.
We could look out the window and see these cute colored houses across the street. (Also, my photo. If it's not my photo, it's from Google.)
We could look out the window and see these cute colored houses across the street. (Also, my photo. If it's not my photo, it's from Google.)
Our hostel was pretty central I think, and in the main part of the "downtown" sort of area. There was a hill, it was like, THE hill of the town. The most expensive houses were on this huge hill, and we needed to see them. The sun was also setting and we wanted to watch it go down from the top of the hill.
So we climb the streets. But we are having trouble finding a place to actually see the sunset. There are too many houses and trees everywhere. We don't argue...but Chelsie and I definitely each have our own suggestions on which turns to take as we go higher, that will show us this sunset.
We end up missing the sunset. At least the way we wanted to see it.
We do come across a very posh part of the hill where it looks almost like townhouses that sit at the top of a pasture of...sheep? When I tried to google image search this place, a lot of the images brought up Crescent Hotel. I am wondering if we stumbled upon this grand, and massive hotel, or a part of it, and didn't even know it.
We walk down a path along the pasture, sort of dazed and happy and in La La Land about how beautiful this town is. Here I am. I know pictures are more interesting if a person is in them, and if you know that person. That is my vintage bag I bought and used the whole trip. And this is me in a nutshell really, starting to feel the laid back vibe from these towns, and trying not to look so much like a tourist.
It's getting dark and we head back to the hostel (above). Tonight we are in a female-only dorm, but tomorrow night we will get moved to a mixed room. Not sure how we feel about that. Okay, yes we are, we hate it. The last thing we want is to share a dorm room with stinky traveller boys. Not kidding, they wreak from their unwashed hair to their unwashed clothes. We find all this out later in our travels, and it is not pretty.
We wake at 7:30am. I am on the top bunk, and Chels is below me. When in dorm style rooms, we tend to stick together, because at least if one of us is shaking the bunk bed, the other can tell her to quit it.
It was so hot in our room that night that I couldn't even sleep with pants on. Why do I tell you this...Well, as I sit up, thinking about making my way out to the bathroom and I see a person on the top bunk in the corner of the room. The person is "sleeping" in their own sleeping bag (this is a no-no in hostels, you have to use their bedding for hygienic reasons), and the person is essentially sleeping with their travel backpack.
The person is on the larger side, and I begin to realize that this might not be a female sharing our female dorm room. I see three other girls on the beds on our side of the room still sleeping. They must have come in during the night and we didn't hear them. I sleep with earplugs, so I can't hear a thing at night generally.
I have to go to the bathroom bad. But I have no pants on. What if this is a guy? What if he sees me getting out of the top of the bunk bed? The matter is urgent, and I have to get out regardless of the mystery person on the other side of the room. I carefully try to crawl out onto the ladder without shaking the bed around too much for Chelsie underneath. As I begin my descent, the person starts to move and peer out of their covers....crap! I go down faster, and as I am getting half of myself dressed, the person emerges out of it's bed, and down the bunk bed ladder, takes HIS bag, and walks out of the room. Yikes! It really is a he!
Chelsie is awake and I tell her of the dude in our room. We are super weirded out, but guess that maybe the guys dorm was full and he was allowed to come into ours? We also suspect he was trying to get out of the room before we all discovered him, became weirded out, and it all got super awkward.
We are now way less excited to go into the mixed dorm the next night. Yuck.
We are up, and on our way to have more adventures in Bath. We go take a look at the Abbey, and then pay some money to hang out in a beautiful park where a small waterfall under a bridge flows. We had stopped at a small bookstore before, and I bought a copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane Austen lived in the town of Bath for a portion of her life, so there was a lot of Jane Austen books in this store, and it felt almost like betrayal to buy a Bronte book, but I just have a craving to read Jane Eyre instead. By now I really needed some new reading material. One of the books I had brought with me was a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor. Why?? It's not like I can understand any of them without sitting in a University english class. What is wrong with me.
The late morning is dedicated to taking it easy. With all of the time changes and travelling, my body is getting worn down, and I am getting a cold. We rest in the park, read among ducks, and watch the water rush by in the sunny weather.
As we become hungry, we leave the park to find lunch. We come across an East Indian restaurant. We order, and are soon disappointed with our appetizer. One tiny samosa each. Are they for real? The rest of the meal was good, but also small. We still aren't sure how tipping works here in England, and we leave a 10 cent tip...and because we felt ripped off. We find this immensely funny, and nearly pull the tablecloth off with us as we try to get out of there before our waiter gets back. Giggling hysterically, we are back out on the street, and try to decide what to do next.
The town is so small (or at least the area we care about with the shopping) that we can figure out our way around quite easily already. A decision is made to split up for the rest of the afternoon and meet back at the hostel for dinner.
I have a town map, and I want to explore more than what we have seen so far. I see that there are some cool antique stores on the map, and decide to try to find one of them. It's a beautiful sunny day, and I make my way to the first store. The first one is beautiful, full of very expensive items, and owned by an older woman who looks like she is an antique in there herself. I find a set of cloth napkins, and leave it at that.
I try to find the other one, but I am getting lost, and I am tired and hot after walking so far in a short amount of time, so I decide to make my way back the way I came. I am not really worried about being lost, this is the safest town I have ever seen. I have not heard one siren, or seen one police officer. The creepiest thing that has happened has been weirdo dude in our room.
It's all very exciting to be on my own, as Chelsie and I have not split up once so far. I come across a very old church that no one seems to use anymore. It's very small, and has a very overgrown graveyard that surrounds it.
It's incredibly beautiful and creepy all at the same time. I didn't really understand the graveyard- a lot of the graves had names on small signs, or on the headstones, but it seemed more like a historical burial place than one where normal townspeople were buried. I walk around, reading the names like I might come across one I recognize, and then I eventually move on.
I finally make it back unscathed from my afternoon alone, and Chelsie and I go try to see where Jane Austen lived.
We go to the number of the "flat" (that's what they call the apartment) and there is no indication that this is the one she lived in. We thought there might be a sign? Hence my expression in this photo.
There is a small museum for Jane Austen as well and we go in. The doorman is dressed from Austen's timeperiod, but I write in my journal about his "disgustingly cracked lips and bad teeth." And get this, I actually found a picture of him on Google!! Yeah I know, he really is a nice guy despite...oh nevermind.
We aren't overly impressed with any of it. There are just tons of different copies of her books with revised covers, and a lot of merchandise from A&E's 6 hour BBC version starring Colin Firth, including a painted portrait of him as Mr. Darcy? Who the heck would put that up in their home?
Disappointed, we go have dinner in the bar underneath our hostel. It's another St. Christopher's Inn hostel, and it looks kind of fun down there, in an english-bar-kind of way. We are too tired to find another interesting hole-in-the-wall place to eat tonight.
We order, and then sit and chat about our afternoons. Chelsie went back to the park with the bridge and waterfall to read and have her alone time. It was good for us to have a break from each other for a while, though we are both still too nervous to do much more of that. Some who have travelled more would probably find that amusing, but we are proud enough of ourselves just for making our way across the world with only each other!
As we talk, our meals come. Our waiter is a big, tall guy from behind the bar that had checked us in the night before. As he sets our plates down, I see a small piece of white paper folded and tucked in by my fries.
"Chelsie, look.."
"What...what is it??"
I open it and read to her, "Call me, my name is David! Ask for me @ the bar. 0789..."
I try really hard to not make any expression, and I realize he is probably watching me from across the restaurant as I read it. I can tell Chelsie is about to die, and I give her the eyes that say "Don't...."
We go back to our room which is the mixed dorm, totally laugh about my note from dinner (that I never responded to by the way), and get ready for bed. It's like 9pm. You see? I have always been going to bed early. Three other girls share the room with us, and no boys yet. The girls tell us that they have been travelling the world for at least a year if I remember right. Their bags are actually colossal sized suitcases filled with tons and tons of clothes. They are getting ready to go out and get wasted, basically, is what they tell us, and want us to join them. I still feel sick, and we are both exhausted. And getting wasted is probably not the smartest thing for us to do at this point. We just hope that no more mystery creeps crawl in our room again tonight...
Last morning in Bath. We plan to take a bus back to London, to then stay the night in the train station for our train in the morning to Paris. In hindsight, this was the dumbest plan ever (the part where we stay overnight in a station, and not a nice, warm, hostel bed).
I go have a shower in the big, communal bathroom. The showers are in stalls...really nasty, dirty, hairy, plugged drain stalls. I am going to barf. I hate this, I hate hostels, I want to go home and have a shower. Sick, gross, gross. And there are guys out there...EW. One smiles at me as I brush my teeth at the sink, and I give him a look, and leave. I am tired, sick, and just don't smile at me pal, I am in no mood.
We try to find internet access somewhere in the town, and have no luck. We stumble across a library, and somehow manage to log on and get 1 hour of free internet. You have to have a library number and password to do this, so we thought this nothing short of a miracle that we got on. We had to check out itinerary and book a hostel for Paris.
We did not plan out where we would be staying ahead of time on this trip, we just booked hostels a few days before, hoping that they were available for when we needed to be at our new destination.
Before our bus ride back to London, we go rest in the beautiful Henrietta Park. The trees in this park are huge and beautiful. One massive tree sort of has rose coloured leaves among the green. We sit and read and write while some knob drives his remote control car around the park like a 5 year old ruining the mood of the place.
We go catch our bus, and arrive at St. Pancras Eurorail Station. Like I said, we are staying here overnight to catch our morning train to Paris. I think our reasoning was that "it won't be that bad" and "it will save us a little money". Yeah I know, bad plan.
This is one of the statues in the station.
I won't go into detail about this night, it's not worth your time reading really. Let's just say it was long...SO LONG. And I was half crazy by the end because it was next to impossible to sleep on a bench there. Worst night ever. I manage to write in my journal at 4:20am- "Feel like I might die. Wanting to get on train so bad. One hour to go. Hope I don't get sicker because of this. And I really want a hot bath...and SLEEP. Chels is going crazy- laughing and silly. I am consistently blah."
It's true, Chels started to lose it by about this time in the morning. I shut down, she goes manic. We are a great team.
The train finally arrives, we get on, exhausted and with our eyes barely open. I don't remember a thing of that ride.
To Paris we go...
The person is on the larger side, and I begin to realize that this might not be a female sharing our female dorm room. I see three other girls on the beds on our side of the room still sleeping. They must have come in during the night and we didn't hear them. I sleep with earplugs, so I can't hear a thing at night generally.
I have to go to the bathroom bad. But I have no pants on. What if this is a guy? What if he sees me getting out of the top of the bunk bed? The matter is urgent, and I have to get out regardless of the mystery person on the other side of the room. I carefully try to crawl out onto the ladder without shaking the bed around too much for Chelsie underneath. As I begin my descent, the person starts to move and peer out of their covers....crap! I go down faster, and as I am getting half of myself dressed, the person emerges out of it's bed, and down the bunk bed ladder, takes HIS bag, and walks out of the room. Yikes! It really is a he!
Chelsie is awake and I tell her of the dude in our room. We are super weirded out, but guess that maybe the guys dorm was full and he was allowed to come into ours? We also suspect he was trying to get out of the room before we all discovered him, became weirded out, and it all got super awkward.
We are now way less excited to go into the mixed dorm the next night. Yuck.
We are up, and on our way to have more adventures in Bath. We go take a look at the Abbey, and then pay some money to hang out in a beautiful park where a small waterfall under a bridge flows. We had stopped at a small bookstore before, and I bought a copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane Austen lived in the town of Bath for a portion of her life, so there was a lot of Jane Austen books in this store, and it felt almost like betrayal to buy a Bronte book, but I just have a craving to read Jane Eyre instead. By now I really needed some new reading material. One of the books I had brought with me was a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor. Why?? It's not like I can understand any of them without sitting in a University english class. What is wrong with me.
The late morning is dedicated to taking it easy. With all of the time changes and travelling, my body is getting worn down, and I am getting a cold. We rest in the park, read among ducks, and watch the water rush by in the sunny weather.
As we become hungry, we leave the park to find lunch. We come across an East Indian restaurant. We order, and are soon disappointed with our appetizer. One tiny samosa each. Are they for real? The rest of the meal was good, but also small. We still aren't sure how tipping works here in England, and we leave a 10 cent tip...and because we felt ripped off. We find this immensely funny, and nearly pull the tablecloth off with us as we try to get out of there before our waiter gets back. Giggling hysterically, we are back out on the street, and try to decide what to do next.
The town is so small (or at least the area we care about with the shopping) that we can figure out our way around quite easily already. A decision is made to split up for the rest of the afternoon and meet back at the hostel for dinner.
I have a town map, and I want to explore more than what we have seen so far. I see that there are some cool antique stores on the map, and decide to try to find one of them. It's a beautiful sunny day, and I make my way to the first store. The first one is beautiful, full of very expensive items, and owned by an older woman who looks like she is an antique in there herself. I find a set of cloth napkins, and leave it at that.
I try to find the other one, but I am getting lost, and I am tired and hot after walking so far in a short amount of time, so I decide to make my way back the way I came. I am not really worried about being lost, this is the safest town I have ever seen. I have not heard one siren, or seen one police officer. The creepiest thing that has happened has been weirdo dude in our room.It's all very exciting to be on my own, as Chelsie and I have not split up once so far. I come across a very old church that no one seems to use anymore. It's very small, and has a very overgrown graveyard that surrounds it.
It's incredibly beautiful and creepy all at the same time. I didn't really understand the graveyard- a lot of the graves had names on small signs, or on the headstones, but it seemed more like a historical burial place than one where normal townspeople were buried. I walk around, reading the names like I might come across one I recognize, and then I eventually move on.
I finally make it back unscathed from my afternoon alone, and Chelsie and I go try to see where Jane Austen lived.
We go to the number of the "flat" (that's what they call the apartment) and there is no indication that this is the one she lived in. We thought there might be a sign? Hence my expression in this photo.
There is a small museum for Jane Austen as well and we go in. The doorman is dressed from Austen's timeperiod, but I write in my journal about his "disgustingly cracked lips and bad teeth." And get this, I actually found a picture of him on Google!! Yeah I know, he really is a nice guy despite...oh nevermind.
We aren't overly impressed with any of it. There are just tons of different copies of her books with revised covers, and a lot of merchandise from A&E's 6 hour BBC version starring Colin Firth, including a painted portrait of him as Mr. Darcy? Who the heck would put that up in their home?
Disappointed, we go have dinner in the bar underneath our hostel. It's another St. Christopher's Inn hostel, and it looks kind of fun down there, in an english-bar-kind of way. We are too tired to find another interesting hole-in-the-wall place to eat tonight.
We order, and then sit and chat about our afternoons. Chelsie went back to the park with the bridge and waterfall to read and have her alone time. It was good for us to have a break from each other for a while, though we are both still too nervous to do much more of that. Some who have travelled more would probably find that amusing, but we are proud enough of ourselves just for making our way across the world with only each other!
As we talk, our meals come. Our waiter is a big, tall guy from behind the bar that had checked us in the night before. As he sets our plates down, I see a small piece of white paper folded and tucked in by my fries.
"Chelsie, look.."
"What...what is it??"
I open it and read to her, "Call me, my name is David! Ask for me @ the bar. 0789..."
I try really hard to not make any expression, and I realize he is probably watching me from across the restaurant as I read it. I can tell Chelsie is about to die, and I give her the eyes that say "Don't...."
We go back to our room which is the mixed dorm, totally laugh about my note from dinner (that I never responded to by the way), and get ready for bed. It's like 9pm. You see? I have always been going to bed early. Three other girls share the room with us, and no boys yet. The girls tell us that they have been travelling the world for at least a year if I remember right. Their bags are actually colossal sized suitcases filled with tons and tons of clothes. They are getting ready to go out and get wasted, basically, is what they tell us, and want us to join them. I still feel sick, and we are both exhausted. And getting wasted is probably not the smartest thing for us to do at this point. We just hope that no more mystery creeps crawl in our room again tonight...
Last morning in Bath. We plan to take a bus back to London, to then stay the night in the train station for our train in the morning to Paris. In hindsight, this was the dumbest plan ever (the part where we stay overnight in a station, and not a nice, warm, hostel bed).
I go have a shower in the big, communal bathroom. The showers are in stalls...really nasty, dirty, hairy, plugged drain stalls. I am going to barf. I hate this, I hate hostels, I want to go home and have a shower. Sick, gross, gross. And there are guys out there...EW. One smiles at me as I brush my teeth at the sink, and I give him a look, and leave. I am tired, sick, and just don't smile at me pal, I am in no mood.
We try to find internet access somewhere in the town, and have no luck. We stumble across a library, and somehow manage to log on and get 1 hour of free internet. You have to have a library number and password to do this, so we thought this nothing short of a miracle that we got on. We had to check out itinerary and book a hostel for Paris.
We did not plan out where we would be staying ahead of time on this trip, we just booked hostels a few days before, hoping that they were available for when we needed to be at our new destination.
Before our bus ride back to London, we go rest in the beautiful Henrietta Park. The trees in this park are huge and beautiful. One massive tree sort of has rose coloured leaves among the green. We sit and read and write while some knob drives his remote control car around the park like a 5 year old ruining the mood of the place.
This is one of the statues in the station.
I won't go into detail about this night, it's not worth your time reading really. Let's just say it was long...SO LONG. And I was half crazy by the end because it was next to impossible to sleep on a bench there. Worst night ever. I manage to write in my journal at 4:20am- "Feel like I might die. Wanting to get on train so bad. One hour to go. Hope I don't get sicker because of this. And I really want a hot bath...and SLEEP. Chels is going crazy- laughing and silly. I am consistently blah."
It's true, Chels started to lose it by about this time in the morning. I shut down, she goes manic. We are a great team.
The train finally arrives, we get on, exhausted and with our eyes barely open. I don't remember a thing of that ride.
To Paris we go...
No comments:
Post a Comment