Sunday is Bath Day

 

Great setting for breakfast this morning with a window view for Linda. She watched as a small tour bus arrived shortly before 8:30 and loaded passengers for the day’s trip to Stonehenge and other points. Tomorrow it will be us getting on the same bus, though I have been told we will have to be out ready for it by a quarter after eight. She sure does like those stone circles.

Linda chuckles at the British spreading their napkins completely out in their laps, or even wearing them like a bib. This morning I noticed that Linda was the odd one in the room where we were eating breakfast as she was the only person there with her napkin partially folded in her lap. Note the photo of my fully opened napkin. Please ignore the protrusion at the bottom center of the photo, I am not sure where that came from. As for Linda, one would think these colonials would show some manners when they come to the mother country and try to comply with the local customs, wouldn’t one?

Sally Lunn’s, the home of the famous buns is just a few feet away from the entrance to our hotel. This morning while we may not have discovered the secret to their buns, we may have discovered where they come from.

Early Sunday morning and the sound of music was coming from Bath Abby. That, however, was not our destination this morning.

This was. The Roman Baths minutes after they opened, with no hordes of people and the mist rising off the warm water.

It was like a trip back in time even if the architecture was different form what it was 1800 years ago in the 2nd century AD.

Note the sign.

Sign? What sign?

Roman lead pipe that fed a fountain.

Minerva, the roman Goddess of the scared hot spring.

 

Supports for the floor of a heated room.

A thin piece of lead, inscribed, rolled up, and thrown into the sacred spring. The inscription was a curse upon whoever it was that stole a slave woman from the writer.

What can I say, I like the reflection.

Linda checking out a “dead guy” in the museum.

Why we got there just as they opened, visited the bath section when no one was there, then went back to the museum to see the exhibits. By the time we left after being there for over two hours, it was difficult to see much because of the crowds.

Linda in front of the only remaining section of of the Bath city wall from medieval times. It was some 20 feet high when built, and still is, it is just that the land has been built up over the centuries to where only about six feet of wall remain visible.

All that sightseeing made us hungry, so we stopped in to see a cooking demonstration at the Bath Food Feast. A local chef was making braised ox cheek with root vegetables. I was able to capture one of her secret ingredients, port wine and plenty of it.

She had a great personality, and she also worked very hard. Not a hair out of place when she started, somewhat bedraggled by the time she was done..

Her assistant made wonderful muffins and a great desert, and all done outside of their restaurant. There was more than one time when there was frantic search for a bowl, pan or utensil that wasn’t right at hand as it would have been in their restaurant kitchen. Oh, yes, and we had front row seats thanks to Linda shoving a couple of people out of the way to be among the first several people in the door. So maybe  she may not have been quite that aggressive, but how she got us front row seats I’ll leave to your imagination.

Our kind of meal, dessert first.

A very happy Bath Food Feast attendee.

Get Linda across the pond and she will eat whatever is put before her. She admitted that if she had gone into a restaurant and braised ox cheek, root vegetables and suet muffins had been of the menu she would never ever have ordered. Afterwards she went up the chef to talk about the recipes and something tells me Linda’s version of this meal will be made at some point in the future, though it may be interesting how she comes up with the ox cheek and suet.

My mouth waters just looking at this photo, the food was that good.

No “Men”, “Herren” or “Hommes” here, in England they know what we really are.

Dresses that a lady would have worn in the 1700’s when she had occasion to meet the King.

Three dresses that were worn on special occasions by Princess Diana are in the background, while my princess in the foreground.

Linda in one of the ballrooms that figured in some  of Jane Austen’s novels.

Real Life imitating fiction. Linda getting to dance in that ballroom with the man of her dreams. It’s Jane Austen’s stories come to Life. How did we get to do that? Why, we were there all alone in the ballroom and it just happened. It really, truly, totally doesn’t get better than this.

Late afternoon and the mass of people waiting to get into the Roman Baths is still there. In our case, the early birds got the worm, while these latecomers have to buck the crowds already in there to see much. Been there done that on a day tour a few years ago, which was why we were there when they opened today.

Something different for dinner tonight, Nepalese food, a type of food we have never had before. I thought the draft beer from Nepal that I had was something special with a taste I hadn’t had before. We had each had a different starter and the dipping sauce for each was also different. Linda liked hers and I liked mine, so we agreed that we each preferred what we had ordered. Think nice versus spice.

The nice Linda versus spicy Bob was carried over to our mains, but to show we can agree, we both liked the sides of Musurko Dal, Bhat and Aloo Channa, the latter a chickpea/potato dish. And yes, I was amazed at Linda’s willingness to try foods far removed from what we normally eat. She continues to surprise me. We had discussed eating foods that were “different” when we came to England, and she is not only doing it, she is enjoying it.

We really liked the brass serving bowls and brass plates.

I can’t really describe dessert other than to say it was a modern twist on a Katmandu classic which was topped with pouring cream. It very well may be the closest we ever get to Katmandu, but if we do get there we will eat very well indeed. Life, what an adventure it is.