No Time to Bathe in Bath (Pronounced Bahth)

Took the train to Bath Friday night, intending to find a day trip to the Avebury (pronounced Avebry) stone circles. My researches had found dozens of tours to Salisbury to take tourists to Stonehenge, but none to Avebury circles. I still thought Avebury could be done. Meanwhile, I was primed to see Bath by an Englishman (Peter) of my acquaintance who had lived in Bath for 8 years. He said there were weeks worth of things to see, and a beautiful city, to boot. I chose my hotel for its cheapness (£105 per night is cheap here, with most of that rate being made up by local taxes) and its excellent location (five blocks from the train station and three blocks from the Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths, five more blocks to the Bridge.) Glide your cursor over the photos in the collage and you’ll see the captions. The hotel is over 200 years old. Boasts a plaque that Admiral Nelson dwelt therein. So Did I Dwell.

This town has laughing gulls! Absolutely sound like human laughs. This is an ordinary, humorless gull.

View from my window of the rest of the hotel complex. Getting the old stone cleaned up. Cleaned stone to the left, dirty to the right.

Gently chimed every 15 minutes. Thought it was the sunset gilding the spire, but it was floodlights.

I had a room on the top floor. The staircase got narrower and narrower as I trudged upward. One of the room-cleaning lads took pity on me and carried up my rolling bag and seemed astonished when I tipped him a pound. This room was an under attic small room with definite resonances of “early dorm room”.

Stayed at the Parade Park for one night.  Note the hot air balloon. 🎈 🎈 

See how the windows protrude from the roof on the upper level?  I was in a roof room, thus the angled closet ceiling.

Cleaned walls to left of middle, black with age and sooty walls to the right.

Preciou$$$ touching Mostly Dead MacBook

two feet if that at the base.  “closet”

Hotel called Parade for the street and Park for this large park across the streed and downhill to the riverside.  To wander its gardens a fee is required.  If you continue on Parade street to the cricket fields, however, you can get to the other bank of the river for free.

I grabbed hat, purse and computer and followed the lead of my phone to the Apple Geniuses.  I checked in and people-watched the customers while waiting to be seen.  Thirty-something heavy guy with tattoos, ripped shorts, and a pink half-hawk.  White-haired older woman with a jaunty pink streak in her bob.  Japanese teen girl in a fake fur pink parka.  And two out of the three were wearing sneakers with below ankle socks.  Seems sneakers (not track shoes) are the fashion of choice.

Nick the Genius diagnosed Mostly Dead as being screen dead but brain alive, so we agreed on a brain transplant into a new MacBook.  He warned it could take 48 hours.  I had to head back to London in 18 hours.  Still, I had to make the attempt. . . if it ran long they could probably send it to an Apple store in London.  A quick consultation with a sales guy as to what customization I wanted, signing on dotted iPads, and off I went to find dinner.

Beef and Stilton pasty, £4, okay, not very flavorful, which is weird to say of something with Stilton in it. A £1 worth of tangerines, probably 20 of them. And a cone of Ice Cream of the Gods.

I bet you thought I made that up!  The Hotel Chocolat had lots to offer.  

[5 days later, still nibbling away at the tangerines.  Best food buy yet!]  The ice cream of the gods was for average non-gods.  Okay tasting, but I thought it needed cream and less milk.

The computer now in professional and hopefully good fast hands, I needed to figure out how to get to Avebury.  And could I get a massage and mineral bath at Thermae Spa?  And how many Bath sights could I fit in 18 hours, minus sleep?