Spent much of today, Sunday, with Sarah, a gal from Melbourne, Australia, who's living and working in London and takes weekend trips all over UK and Europe. We did the "touristy" things today, which is much more fun with a friend.
These included the Roman Bath House self-guided tour, which was much better than the guided tour they offered ten years ago. They've got numbered stations that are keyed to audio descriptions of what you're looking at. The sound effects of water and background voices and music really makes it easy to picture people using the spa in the old days. The mosaics they've recovered are quite lovely, although there's very little of it on display. I don't know if that's because there's so little available, or if they just didn't put it all out. The water's green with algae because the building has no roof and it's exposed to the sun. It's quite a pretty green, however, and the water is very warm.
After a lunch near the Royal Theatre in which we shared a toffee-drenched cake with clotted cream, we also took the Costume Museum self-guided tour (more interesting than I expected, and lots of giggles trying on the corsets).
We walked to Royal Crescent and then toured House #1 on the Crescent, which I didn't think was worth the £5 entrance fee.
Flagging by now, we took a sustenance break near the abbey in a lower courtyard off of York St. It was 5:30 by now, and we were the last diners to be seated. We opted for aubergine and tomato soup instead of tea and scones.
We parted for the rest of the day, whereupon I headed for the town's best Internet cafe, the one nearest the train depot. The workers here really know their internet stuff, and went an extra mile to help me load the applications I needed onto Perry. I checked a few touring websites including www.goodleaf.co.uk, which does tree climbing on the Isle of Wight, and went online and found my Sudoku unlock code--yay, I can play again! My final task was to walk around the block to scope out the bus stop I need to go to on Monday.
I took a supper of my picnic leftovers in the Y's dining room with Sarah. We split my last two Minerva chocolates, including the rose violet one. It was like eating a sugared sachet; half a piece was plenty.
Did up my scrapbook through Bath--happy to get that done. I still need to blog. I'm feeling the desire to do that, and looking forward to it this week.
I have discovered that I'm supposed to spend about a week in one place along the southern coast in Cornwall. Need to find the lodging for that--a cabin or something to let.
I'm feeling a little worried about tomorrow's walk, and aware after talking with Sarah that it's time for me to let go of inadequacies about how I choose to travel and live on the road. I am ready to release comparisons to my mom and her love for venues that, frankly, bore my spirit as much as they feed hers. I need to follow my own intuition and guidance about what is right for me. Hmmm. Scare's gone for now.
