Rub A Dub
At the Aqua Sulis Roman Bath.
We took a bath… uh, I mean we went to Bath this weekend. I had already taken my bath for August . We took a bus on Saturday morning and arrived in Bath in time for lunch. We grabbed some pasties in the main square and sat at outside and watched a street performer wearing a pink tutu, juggle swords while riding an 8 foot unicycle. Quite entertaining.
After lunch, we scooted across the street to the main attraction, the Roman baths themselves. Originally, the natural hot spring had been used by the native British peoples as a place of worship for the god Sulis but the site was later co-oped by the Romans to serve as a bath and place of worship for the goddess Minerva. A bunch of cool stuff there, although we have seen much more in the way of ruins and Roman buildings while living in Rome. On my campus, we even had a 2000 year old Roman cistern. The Bronze head of Minerva was neat though, as was the pediment showing some mouth of truth-esque bearded god. We didn’t get to take a dip in the natural hot spring water (which was gree, odd smelling, chockfull of algae and generally kinda gross) but we did get to drink some at the end of our visit. Nothing tastier than slightly warm and sulfury bath water.
Bath Abbey
Upon leaving the baths complex we went next door to the abbey which is built over even more Roman ruins. It was apparently the last Gothic style church built in England. While rather plain on the inside, except for the neat vaulted ceiling, we did get to hear some of what I could only call abstract organ playing. I don’t know whether the sound was intended to be that way, or if they were just testing out the pipes. Trippy stuff.
We went to the Royal Crescent and Circus after that. The Circus is basically a grouping of houses built in a circle around a traffic circle with some giant trees in the middle. The Royal Crescent is 30 houses built in a (surprise surprise) crescent, sitting above a park. Courtney practiced being a crescent here. She may have a future in it (see picture below).
Most of what followed you could probably call wandering. We traipsed back and forth across the rather small but pretty town. We stopped in some shops. We grabbed a bite to eat at a local pub. Note: In England, scampi just means shrimp as opposed to the shrimp in butter that you would get from ordering scampi in the states. We wandered more, got some fudge from a sweet shop and then made our way home.
Bath was a possible work option for Courtney, but at the time we were still holding out for Scotland. In the end, while Bath is pretty, Oxford is probably the better choice. Just as pretty, with a bit more to do and see, and less hills, which when you either bike or walk, is important.
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- Hey look, it’s Bath!
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- He would have fit in nicely at any Renaissance Festival
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- Lots of strange rabbit statues in town
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- First view of the Roman baths
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- Dave and the Bath Abbey
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- Take a swim, I dare you.
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- They thought he might be a Gorgon, an image associated with the goddess Minerva.
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- Roman mosaic
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- This is the main spring. The masonry is orange because of the high iron content of the water.
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- View from the ground floor of the bath
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- A classic Roman drinking fountain providing an endless supply of purified Bath water.
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- Mmmm. Tastes……mineraly (we did not finish our glasses)
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- The Bath Abbey
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- Lovely gothic ceiling.
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- The Royal Cresent.
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- Courtney is a cresent too!
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- We stopped outside the Jane Austen center for one reason, to take this photo for Amy and Jackie.
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- Neat old Bridge
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- River Avon
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- Streets of Bath
The Yellow Pages are Useful
I normally don't use them this way, but in the states we had a gas grill.
For those of you who do not know, I place yellow pages advertising for a large American company. In fact they do have yellow pages directories over here in England as well. They are still printed on a yearly basis all over the world.
We have had a couple of BBQs here with our housemates and friends from all over the world. Francois from South Africa let us know that he uses yellow pages all the time, and he used it the same way he always does, ripped out pages rolled up and placed under the charcoal to light up the BBQ. The Australians agreed that the yellow pages are great for this, but they use it for other things too… evening out table legs and the like.
There was myself and 7 other people in their mid 20’s at this BBQ, not a single one uses the yellow pages to find numbers for pizza, plumbers, or anything else for that matter. Now, I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, but it is still just nice to know that what I do for a living really makes a difference.
He’s Got the Whole World in His House
So, in the last month we have lived in 3 different houses, and with quite the global collection of house mates. When we were still living in Bournemouth we lived with Dee a student from Zimbabwe and her boyfriend Jon from some other sub-Saharan African country I can’t remember. The travel nursing house we moved into first in Oxford contained Kai the nurse and his scientist girlfriend Sophie both of whom hail from Australia. In our second house in Oxford we moved in and within a couple of days Taurek and his parents who are Jordanians moved out. On the same day we moved in so did Giuseppe from Sicily who is doing some graduate work in automotive engineering. After the Jordanians moved out, their room was occupied by Rene and Hadrian from France who sell art door to door. The one longstanding resident of our current house is Francois from South Africa who came to England to work for Nielsen (the TV rating people). It doesn’t stop there either, I am told that when the French guys move out in another couple of weeks that we will be joined by a Belgian woman and wonder of wonders, an actual English couple. Really, who needs to travel when the world is coming to us. Thankfully, everyone we have lived with so far we have gotten along well with and really enjoyed meeting. Once we get someone from South America, Antarctica and Asia, the first one to shout out BINGO! wins.
Things we didn’t post in July
Yeah I know, we can both be lazy sometimes, anyway there is some junk we did in July that we did not get around to posting because of laziness, busyness or both.
The Bournemouth Oceanarium:
We spent an afternoon with the fishes. Bournemouth actually has a pretty nice aquarium for a town of that size. We saw piranhas, upside down catfish, skates, deep sea crabs, a bunch of stuff. They even had one of those tunnels that you could walk through with a tank all around you. We got to watch the turtles and rays get fed while we were in that tube. Pretty cool all in all.
Corfe Caste:
Dorset (the County that Bournemouth is in) is chock full of historical landmarks. Among these are the ruins of Corfe Castle. It is located about an hour and a half away by bus in the gap between the Purbeck Hills. Corfe Castle was ordered to be destroyed during the English civil war because it was a stronghold of the Royalists. It seems a pitty to purpousfully destroy one’s history but I am sure they had good reasons at the time. The ruins were very impressive and it was very windy. Afterwards, we had lunch in the picturesque town at the foot of the castle.
Swanage:
Across the Poole harbor from Bournemouth there is a small town called Swanage on a lovely stretch of the Jurassic coast. We decided to take a bus over on one wet cold weekend. We got there in the afternoon and hiked a couple of miles along the coast and saw the Durlston Castle and the Tilly Whim Caves. We did not quite make it to Durdle Door (Durdle Door is a landbridge that is famous in these parts). Yes, all of these things sound like made up names that would show up in Harry Potter or other children’s literature, and we enjoyed making fun of them. Once we had hiked back into town we watched a parade that just happened to be going on. The highlight of the parade had to be the moving Thriller recreation that even included little 3 year old zombies. Very cute.
Ahhh Comfort Food
The Cheesiest (especially after we are done with it)
I had Courtney smuggle me back some comfort food when she came back from the states. She couldn’t bring me a carnitas chimi, but I forgive her for that. She did bring me back some Kraft mac ‘n cheese though, which we ate tonight. Such good stuff. Tastes like home. You just can’t get it here. They do have Heinz brand macaroni and cheese that comes in a can. How weird is that. I think she brought 4 boxes home with her, so we are now down 1, 3 to go. She also brought some corn bread mix, which we made and ate with chili. You can get the same Stag brand chili that you find in the states, but not a drop of corn meal to be found, at least where we were looking. One more box of that left too. Now we just have to see if our housemate who is Italian and was for a while a Mexican food chef cooks Mexican food or “Mexican food.” If it is the good stuff I will be so happy.
David’s Face: Behold!
Magnificent, isn't it?
Well, there have been some requests for a beard update. As you can see to the left, it is still here after my recent haircut, large and in charge. No birds making any nests in it yet, but I can twirl my mustache into little points, which is awesome. It is not quite Billy Mays quality, but now that he is gone, I try to keep him in my heart and represented on my face. Sorry for the poor quality of the photo, but that came from my web cam as Courtney has the camera with her in the States right now. Let me know what you think.
People search for the strangest things.
People search for the strangest things.
If nothing else, this blog has entertained me with its Blog Stats page. “Swine Flu” and its misspellings are still the number one draw to this site due to this and this. New funny things? Someone clicked to our site after searching for “Billy Mays beard” presumably because of the awesome magical beard I am still sporting. Someone else clicked on the picture of my beautiful wife (scroll down to see the picture) after searching for “marmot lick hand.” Courtney shows up on the first page of Google Image Search for “marmot lick hand,” but not “marmot hand” or “marmot lick.” She is lucky enough to show up on the first row of results for “marmot face,” thus showing that due to the web she is now eternally linked to that nick name.
Thanks to Art Backwash for the beardy graphic, and R.I.P. Billy Mays and your magical beard.
David Sans Courtneys
Old picture, but Courtney has the camera in Oxford
So Courtney left earlier this week leaving me all alone to work in Bournemouth. She posted about what she has been up to, so I suppose I should share too.
The weather has been pretty gray and cold this week. Lots and lots of rains. This has kept me largely inside, short of a trip to go get some chips and a drink the other day. Most of my free time was spent on Youtube.com or reading.
On Wednesday I found myself huddling next to the radiator in the morning it was so cold. Then today happened, crystal clear blue skies when I woke up. An hour later, heavy rain. Then clear again. It did this several times throughout the day. Luckily when I got off work it was bright and warm so I decided to take a walk down to the town center, through the Bournemouth gardens, and then back along the beach for one last time. I read on the beach for a while, but left when it got cold and windy, which it seems to do at 6ish here. Don’t know when my next trip to a beach will be, but it was nice living by one while it lasted.
This Saturday morning I too will leave Bournemouth in lovely Dorset, England to rejoin my wonderful wife who has already started phase 2 of our travels in Oxford. Hopefully this weekend we can find ourselves some nice place to stay that includes internets so that come Monday morning I don’t have to schlep myself and my computer down to some cafe to work.
Swine Flu Party Time
This is why people come to our site.
So, you can see blog stats and stuff with WordPress, and almost every day we get at least a couple of people coming to our website after searching for “Swine Flu” (or even occasionally “Swine Flue”) because of our post about getting stuck in the airport. To those of you who are coming to this website looking for H1N1 information, boy did you make a wrong turn, but please enjoy the site anyway.
That is the most frequent search term, but there are other entertaining searches that have lead people here including “bearded man,” “is there any mexicans in england,” and two, count them two searches for “tasty potato nom nom.” The internet is full of crazy, and we are just glad to help contribute to that.
Thank you for the picture to Skyskraper where you can purchase it in t-shirt form.
Hyperspace Hoopla
Hahahahahah! I Die!
Courtney M.
The Nerd
A Nurse and A Nerd 