From Bath to Bloomsbury

Man, a lot happened since I blogged last! I just pasted too, too, too many photos below, so I'll let them do most of the talking. You can find even more photos of this weekend's hijinks by clicking on "Melanie's Photos" to your right. Friday, Alison and I started off the weekend with a day trip to Bath. Bath is named, appropriately, for the Roman Baths that are restored and central to the town today, even as they were in, say, 400 AD. We'll get to pictures of the baths in a second.

First things first, of course. Bath is also known for Sally Lunn's Buns (really). Sally Lunn fled France in the 1600's, presumably with a really tasty recipe for a glorified hamburger bun. These things really are tasty. Alison and I shared one bun, as it were, with lemon curd, and another bun with raspberry jam. Both came with clotted cream (as creamtastic as it sounds) and tea.

Fortified to meet the Romans, we next did the official Roman Baths tour. Here I am standing above the baths and the Roman ruins themselves, with famous Bath Abbey behind me. (Bath is awesome!)

Bill Bryson narrates a great audio tour that introduces visitors to the baths, but not to the water (no touching, no swimming). The "sacred spring" the Romans worshipped at their Temple Sulis Minerva still gurgles and bubbles on site.

Here's Ali adjacent to the magical spring waters.

Did you know the Romans invented the cell phone? Just kidding. That's Ali listening to the audio tour.

We walked on from the baths to something called The Royal Crescent, a curved string of adjoining (and very expensive, and rarely up for sale) houses in an exclusive part of Bath.

Designed by the same father and son team, "The Circus" in Bath is another example of Georgian architecture (and adjacent, curvilinear homes).

The next day, Alison, Heather B., and I all traveled by train to London as each of us had London plans for the weekend. We started out Saturday together, however, riding the Tube to the National Gallery and visiting the National Portrait Gallery. While there, we not only saw the only existing painting of the Bronte sisters together (painted by their brother, Branwell), but we saw the exhibition associated with the BP Portrait Award. 1700 portrait artists enter, and 55 winners are chosen to show their work.

After our visit to the National Portrait Gallery, each of us headed off for different weekend fun. I met up with Ed's long-time friends, Ellinor and Jon, at the British Museum. It was incredibly fun to meet them and to stay with them for a couple of nights after hearing so much about them from Ed. Before we met, I had time to run through and see the museum's Greatest Hits, including the so-called "Elgin Marbles," sculptures from the Parthenon, showcased in the gallery above.

Marbles.

More marble.

Here's twenty tourists (me included) jammed up against the display case to get a photo of the Rosetta Stone.

The museum's rotunda, with central reading room, is extremely striking. Here, I met Jon and Ellinor for lunch.

Here are Ellinor and Jon outside the Sir John Soane's (1753-1837) Museum, linked at the bottom of this page. Photography is not allowed inside, but if it was, you'd see about fourteen pictures here of Soane's (who was an extremely creative architect) innovation (and obsessive collecting). If Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Winchester Mystery House had a baby, and it lived in London, it would be the completely engaging Sir John Soane's Museum.

Next, we rode the train to Ellinor and Jon's house, which is adjacent to the site where London moved the Crystal Palace after the six months it was in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The Crystal Palace was so popular that the "Crystal Palace Company" bought and moved it to Ellinor and Jon's neighborhood as an ongoing educational, entertainment, and financial venture. Included in 1854 on this new site were the first dinosaur sculptures in the world. The story of both the dinosaurs and the Crystal Palace is fascinating, and is linked at the bottom of the page.

I walked to see the dinosaurs as well as what remains of the Crystal Palace itself, which burned in 1936.

One of the remaining statues on the Crystal Palace terrace.

Yesterday, Ellinor, Jon and I decided to head south to Charleston, the farmhouse of painter Vanessa Bell, and the longtime meeting place of members of the Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf was Vanessa Bell's sister, and the group also included E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, and Lytton Strachey). En route to breakfast beforehand, Ellinor and I stopped in to see (above) the Crystal Palace Train Station, which still operates a track or two.

Charleston Farmhouse.

Another view, with colorful garden.

The pond at Charleston, with sculpture.

In the garden at Charleston.

In the garden at Charleston.

Next, we visited a nearby church in which two members of the Bloomsbury Group, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, contributed murals.

Once inside the church, this switch illuminates the murals.

Murals inside the church.

We continued our trip south to see, among other things, the so-called Long Man of Wilmington, a giant of the Iron Age, carved in to the chalk in the distance. See him in the photo?

Here's a close-up. Read more about him at the link at the bottom of the page.

Next, we arrived at the English Channel. Here are Ellinor and Jon on the beach with chalk cliffs in the distance.

We drove for a bit along the English Channel before meeting a friend of Ellinor and Jon's at a pub called The Ram, not far from the Charleston Farmhouse we visited earlier in the afternoon. Returning to Ellinor and Jon's after a long, satisfying day, we had a great pasta dinner and crashed for the night.

This morning, Ellinor, Jon and I rode the train in to Victoria Station. I continued on to Oxford from there, after a little neighborhood exploring. Here's Buckingham Palace this morning, about 45 minutes before the Changing of the Guard.

By way of other updates, it's nearly midnight and pouring down rain outside. It sounds and feels great, as today was actually pretty hot (81 degrees F) and humid. I came home to a card from Auntie Janet (Mom, pass along my thanks to her!). Heather, Heather and I went out for Thai dinner so we could avoid the melon soup on tonight's menu. Tomorrow kicks off a home stretch of last researching and of paper writing, punctuated by another big dinner on Wednesday and "Hamlet" in Stratford on Thursday. I'll write next on a paper-writing break. Have a great week, everyone! And thanks again to Ellinor and Jon for a really fun weekend!