Allie Goes Global

After the mental spiral of the night before, I was determined to enjoy my one day in Bath, with some… necessary accommodations for the previous day’s issues. Namely, my car wasn’t going to leave the parking spot. In a very old-timey move, I had to have the front desk call a taxi for me. They said they would be there in ten minutes, so I moved outside to enjoy the fresh air in the parking lot.

This area is absolutely beautiful. Which is good, because the taxi took an hour to arrive. My cab driver was a woman about my age, and we chatted on the way into town. At this point, I was feeling somewhat alert after another night of good sleep, and I headed out for the day with a spring in my step.

My first stop was the Roman Baths. The baths and the abbey are in the same shared courtyard, and everything was pleasantly wet and clean from a rain the night before.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but the inside of the entrance building to the baths was incredible. There’s something that I realized after I got home and looked at the hundreds of pictures I took: I took a lot of ceiling pictures. Across the board, and possibly because I went to so many churches, I saw a ton of beautiful ceilings. Bath was no exception.

Once you go through the entrance hall, you’re presented with the main bath. You know, the famous one. But this is hardly the only attraction. There are halls in either direction leading to the rest of the baths, small rooms that were marvels of architecture in their time. There were even some sort of hologram things so you could actually see what they would have looked like when in use.

After touring through the baths, you go downstairs into a sort of basement area to see the original piping and some artifacts, and then you’re routed out through a gift shop. Overall, the baths were a great visit, and I’m very glad I went. Though, a note for anyone sensitive, the whole place does stink, I assume because of the sulfur content of the water.

Next up was Bath Abbey. There’s a quote I love about the abbey, from masons William and Robert Vertue to their bishop: “There shall be none so goodly neither in England nor in France.” With the wisdom of hindsight and several hundred years of architecture that followed, Bath Abbey has certainly been outstripped in both England and France. However, it’s hard to deny the beauty and craftsmanship of the central nave.

The nave is surrounded by stained glass windows. My ability to take pictures of these windows and have them be anything other than colorful smudges never improved, for the record. The abbey also provides a fascinating historical record of lives and deaths in the area for hundreds of years, through the medium of dedicated stones. Some of these have intricate carvings or statues, while others are more basic.

After a little while of exploring the abbey, I headed out for my planned lunch spot: Sally Lunn’s. Sally Lunn’s is an institution, and the home of the famous Bath bunn. Located in the oldest house in Bath, it also contains a kitchen museum showing the actual kitchen where the bunn was created. However, when I got there, the line was literally down the street. I’m a patient person, but after waiting fifteen minutes with literally no line movement, I gave up and went to go seek out some sustenance. Given my pathetic state, it was much needed at this point.

I ended up at The Huntsman, just around the corner. Considering it was prime lunch time, the place was surprisingly empty. I ended up getting Eggs Benedict (because I’m a sucker for a good benny) and a pint of cider (because I drank more cider than water on this trip). The food was excellent and the servers were polite. No complaints.

From there, I walked down into the Parade Gardens across the street to see Pulteney Bridge from the outside, as well as the world-famous weir. The gardens are well worth the visit on their own, if for no other reason than they’re absolutely chock full of random pig statues. My pictures of the weir were underwhelming, as you kind of need to be above it to see it properly, but I did get a pig or two.

Writer’s note: At this point in my writing, we had two back-to-back earthquakes. The joy of living in California.

As I left the park, a man ran right by me, followed by about ten police officers on foot, and several more in cars. Literally no idea what was going on, but he led them on quite a chase. I stayed and watched him duck them for a while, but they got him in the end.

Anyway, at this point, I hopped on the HOHO bus. Most major cities have a hop-on, hop-off bus, and I personally love them. While the ability to get on and off at the major stops is a nice feature, I personally like the audio guide portion even more. They provide headphones, which are brand new, I believe, but pro tip: bring your own headphones if the basic earbud style doesn’t work for you. I always carry a pair of old wired headphones in my bag, so I was all set.

The Bath HOHO takes you on a journey all around town and out into the countryside. The views were incredible and the audio guide was nicely informative without being too dense. The problem at this point is that I was absolutely exhausted. I almost fell asleep on the bus. As a person who is unable to sleep anywhere but my own bed (and even there, not great), this was very weird for me. I had plans for the rest of the day, including prepaid dinner reservations, but I just hit a wall. I grabbed an Uber and went straight back to the hotel around 2pm.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was dead and vaguely depressed at this point, but I was still trying to hold onto the idea that I just needed to keep sleeping at the correct time and I would eventually catch up. But sitting in my hotel room, I was scrolling on my phone, and I discovered an article from National Geographic. This article said that the best way to beat jet lag is to sleep when you’re tired, not on the destination time. I promptly fell over into a 4 hour nap. Woke up, ate some snacks for dinner, and then went back to bed.

And, shockingly, when I woke up in the morning, I felt like a real person again. My mom was right… I wasted the first three days of my trip being miserable, all because I was sleepy. There’s a lesson in all this: listen to your mom, I guess.