Bath - May 14, 2013

Our last full day in England started out with our last English Breakfast – affectionately known as a heart attack on a plate.  It consists of back bacon, sausage, eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, toast and fried toast – the latter of which is actually toast fried in very hot oil – strangely delicious!  We had to say goodbye to Tree Tops B&B, Liz and Ben (the dog) as we are spending the night in Luton which is where we fly to Lisbon from in the morning.  It was a great place to stay and would recommend it to everyone.  We then hopped on a train to Reading and switched trains to go to Bath for the day.  We arrived around noon and dropped our packs at the Bath Backpackers Hostel who will store your bags for the day for 3 Pounds (there are no lockers at the train station).  We showed up at the hostel and they hand printed and corner of a piece of paper with our numbers (10 and 11) which we taped to our bags and she gave us corresponding hand printed pieces of paper.  Our bags were then put on a shelf in the reception area – completely safe (?)  We toured the ancient Roman Baths dating back to 76AD.  It was fascinating!  Bath (or technically called Bath Spa) is an ancient city and would be great to explore.  At 2 pm, we joined a free walking tour which took us for a 2 hour tour around bath where we saw and were informed about the Roman Baths, Bath Abbey, the Avon River, the Bridge which makes the river disappear, Allen Ralph who owned the Quarry, John Wood the Older and John Wood the Younger who designed many of the buildings, the Assembly, the Circus, the Royal Crescent and many other sights.  It was cold and pouring rain for the entire tour.  Our guide, Christine, was fabulous and is one of 76 guides who provide free tours daily in Bath – they are volunteers and will not accept tips – they are proud of Bath and want to show it off.  We had a quick lunch and picked our up our bags – yup they were still there and hopped on the train to London where we took switched trains to Luton by taking the subway from London Paddington to London St Pancras – we are getting pretty good at this train/subway thing – wonder if it will be same when few people speak English.  We arrived in Luton to find the train station deserted and ne'er do wells everywhere.  We asked for directions to the hotel at the train station but they were not much help.  We ended up stopping at a McDonalds to ask for directions and 2 policeman from Leicester heard us and offered up their GPS phone and eventually drove us to our hotel.  We checked in and the man at reception said he would take us to our room as he put on his jacket!  WTF! (Why The Face).  We walked in the rain up a deserted block where our room was in a building which actually had the name of the hotel on it (some consolation I guess).  Our room was actually very clean and quiet for 46 pounds.  We decided to forego dinner and went straight to bed.

Roman Baths - 76 AD

The Circle

Bath Abbey