Bath: Day 4

Above is a picture of the "Royal Crescent," which is hardly done any justice by this. It's basically thirty ginormous homes attached where the wealthiest of the wealthy would stay while they took holiday in Bath. Like their owners' noses, these homes are extremely high up. It is perched on a very high hill as you can sort of see. The grounds are immensely expansive and many people picnic here or play futbol or frisbee. The views from the top are absolutely breathtaking. You can see the gorgeous trees and hills and homes beyond and the air is literally much fresher and breezier up there. What's interesting is, the builder, John Wood, was a Mason so when you look at this from an aerial view, it looks like a crescent moon (one symbol of the Masons). He also laid out many other parts of the city that make the shapes of a sun, a key, and a book (other symbols). Kind of neat, right? But, as you can imagine...these suckers are a fortune. Johnny Depp lived here for a time and Nicholas Cage currently has a residence here. This location is actually about 5 minutes from where I am staying.

Today, we walked around Bath (despite the rain...doesn't seem to faze the English at all) for my Jane Austen class and we took the route of her characters Isabella and Catherine in Northanger Abbey. BEYOND AWESOME. Yeah, yeah, yeah...I'm a literature geek, I know this. But seriously, how many people can boast that they have been to th exact places famous characters in classic literature were. And not just visiting, but actually living there. Though everything is pretty modern, the architecture all remains the same and they try to keep certain things original so you feel as if you are back in Austen's time. The highlight of the walk for me was when we visited a couple of Jane Austen's residences in Bath. I would totally spend more on a place if I knew Jane Austen lived and wrote there. We saw a number of other homes of very famous individuals and the houses are marked by historic plaques. Also, we got a chance to check out where Beau Nash (a master of ceremonies in Bath...which means he basically decided if people were "good" enough to join Bath society when they arrived...if not, he would educate and refine them or turn them away) lived, which is now the famous Theatre Royal. It's also said that his mistress who lived there with him still haunts the place. She is known as the Gray Lady and was previously an actress there.

Sadly, we witnessed the aftermath of a pretty bad accident on our walk. Two cars had a nasty collision and the firefighters were using the jaws of life to free the driver of the one car. Hope everyone turns out ok.

Sherlock Holmes was not QUITE as exciting as Jane Austen, but it was a good class nonetheless. We did some productive discussion and watched a bit of the old Sherlock Holmes BBC version. Just went to the grocery store again to actually stock up, made some chicken, salad, fries, and washed raspberries and enjoyed dinner with everyone. Believe me...those fries get worked off very quickly here.

It was a pretty relaxing day aside. Still getting used to certain things (they don't have American cheese here, but they have every other cheese ever made in the world, and no turkey hot dogs, they call fries oven chips, hot dog buns something fingers, and have a funny name for hamburger buns), but for the most part I am getting pretty acclimated to living here. I even look at the correct side of the street for traffic! By the way...you should be proud I have avoided the traps of Bath fudge and sweet shops despite their inviting window displays and enticing aroma drifting through the open doorways.

Promise to have a more exciting post tomorrow.

Til then, tootaloo!