Post 4- Bath Excursion

 Friday January 29, 2009

 

            First off, I want to share something kind of funny. I’ve been here a week, so obviously, I haven’t picked up the accent, but I’ve gotten so used to hearing it everywhere around me, that it is how I hear myself when I read sometimes. It doesn’t help at all that we are reading books about England in all my classes, but I find it pretty funny.

 

Anyway, yesterday was our first official Thursday Excursion. 

I got there early and went inside the Abbey.

Our first one was of Bath itself. It was great to learn all the history, because by now, I have walked by all these places so many times, but did not know the meaning behind them. Our tour guide was an elderly lady named Felicity. She was great. She was very nice and informative. She’s lived in Bath since the 60’s. We walked around the city and she told us of buildings and their history. We learned that Bath is one of the 3 cities in the world that won an award for being a completely historically restored and upheld city. That is why every building is made to look like the old Bath style. Buildings were once upon a time made of Bath stone. Today they are made of other components, but are covered on the outside with a thin layer of Bath stone to make it appear as if the whole is made out of it. Although they are cheating, in a sense, I think it very cool that they want to uphold their history. (I’m sure they make good money from tourism too.)

 

            Felicity told us about the damages that have been caused to this city. She showed up what blackened buildings looked like. Bath stone is very sensitive to the burning of coal, so the pollution from people burning coal made all the buildings black. Most have been washed, and the burning of coal banned, but it being such a difficult process, many buildings have not been done. Also, she showed us damages to buildings from when Bath was bombed in WWII. I don't know if you can see it in this pic, but there are many holes/pits in the building. Some were completely destroyed and had to be rebuilt.

            

Felicity explained to us about why many buildings have windows cemented in. (You can see those in that same picture.) The city used to tax its citizens by how many windows people had. So many people blocked up many windows in order to pay less taxes, or they would move their windows closer together because if there was less than 12 inches between them, they would count as one window. I guess we all do our best to evade taxes.

            Then we went to the Roman Bath House. It was very cool. It is one of the things that make Bath so famous. There are hot springs under ground and the water is hot simply from that. They do not heat the Bath. This main one we went to is a museum. You cannot swim in that one. But they do have another one where you pay and you can swim in. the water is supposed to be really good for you. In the old days, when people were sick, they would make them drink 3 glasses a day of it. We can buy a glass to try it. I must do that before I leave. Can’t have lived in Bath and not tasted the Bath water.

You like the clown noses on the statues? .. That was never explained to us..

  We also went to a place called "The Circus". This is just a bunch of (very expensive) apartment buildings in a circle. This place is very famous. Nicholas Cage owns one of the apartments here.

This is a bridge over the Avon River, and a part of the river:

            

Lastly, we met the mayor of Bath. He was a very nice man. He seemed to like his job, and liked to talk.. a lot. His accent was so strong, I could not understand him at times. We all signed the guestbook, and felt like we left a piece of us in Bath history : ) . The also opened up a guest book from 2003 when the Queen came and signed it. She gets the whole page for her signature.

The mayor:

 

My sig:

The Queen's sig:

            That was the end of our official tour. As much as I liked learning the history, I was glad it was over because it was the COLDEST day since I got there and my toes felt like they were FROZEN. I went home and relaxed for a bit.

 

            Brian, this is mostly for you:

At night I went to check out the gymnastics class. It was SO fun!  I LOVED it. This class is an adult gym class. The gym is pretty small, and the class was huge! But their system of running the class was great. Everyone warmed up together. Then we all did across the floor stuff together, with like 5 or 6 lines of 5 in each. Then each group went to their own station. Each group was to do whatever they wanted at their station, and the groups rotated every 5 minutes. So I spent 5 mins on tramp, 5 on floor, 5 on the blow up tumble track.. etc. It worked great, in a chaotic kind of way.

I made a friend in the class. I am happy to have a gymnastics friend here! His name is Tom and he also works at the gym. Many people in that class are lower level coaches at the gym. I was amazed though at the adults who took this class not having been in gymnastics. In the US, people might do that with dance, but with gym, people feel like if they didn’t start at age 6, they cant start.. but a lot of people here don’t feel that way I guess. That’s wayyyy cool in my opinion.

 

Anyway, sorry for such a long blog! The excursion gave me a lot to say this time J

PS This was my food today