Bath

Bath is the first place we've been to that I knew about before we arrived to England. It was cool to see it in real life. It was as posh as I had imagined,

Poor kid pretty much spent the entire day in the stroller as we stuffed him with snacks. Wait, not poor kid, lucky kid! That's the life.

We are unashamed tourists consulting our Lonely Planet guidebook everywhere we go. Here we are at the Circus, 33 fancy townhomes built in a circle. 

Bath became the center of the rich and luxurious in England when these homes were built in the 18th century. 

Then this, the Royal Crescent. Built same time as the Circus. Again, coulda/shoulda toured one of them (which is an option) but the poster for tours described "seeing the house put to bed for winter." I don't wanna see a bunch of furniture covered in sheets so we'll hold out for another place and time.

A yellow door for Becca

Me and Georgian Architecture

Bath Abbey

Inside

Our best family photo of the day. View of the Abbey from the Baths. Love you Tru!

Audio Tour! The Roman baths were originally built in 70 AD but were neglected and covered up from flooding. Then in the 18th century it was unearthed and brought back to life. The same people who built the Circus and Royal Crescent added to what architecture was already there to make it accessible to all of us. They had lots of original architecture from Roman times as well as carvings of Roman gods, who also bore similarities to Celtic gods/legends showing the combining of culture that occurred when the Romans came. Cool stuff! 

Cuties!

Vincent drinking Bath water- ew!

Our Roman Soldier

Pultenay Bridge and Avon river

Guess the movie that has scenes of this bridge and area of the river! Vinny told me about it and I didn't believe him so we went home and looked it up and whaddyaknow? he was right. I was wrong. Not the first or the last time that will happen.

I really liked Bath but while I was there I wished it was spring/summer and that my sisters and mom were with me. Not that we didn't have an awesome time! I really really enjoyed it. However, it would be much prettier a different time of year and Vinny just couldn't appreciate the fancy restaurants and great shopping to be had. Which is what I love about him and is probably for the best. But if I happen upon a very very large sum of money I am flying everyone out here in April.

Stratford Park

This is the town centre- nice,  huh? Has everything you could need in walking distance from our house

Stratford Park complete with pond, swans, and ducks

and gazebo

and art gallery/museum. Polish paper cutting. Love it.

A is for....
sorry. How old am I?

Each of the rooms in the museum had some sort of little kids' toy relevant to what the room was teaching about, awesome huh?

Inventor of lawnmower- from Stroud

 After the park/museum I had an unsuccessful grocery store trip in search of chocolate chip cookie ingredients. No shortening. No baking soda. I need to just start asking people more. When I got home I asked the lady we live with about it and they just call things by different names. Shortening= cooking fat. Baking soda= bicarbonate of soda. And the packaging is very different so I don't recognize anything. So for the most part they have the things I need but they are just harder to find making grocery shopping a bit more challenging. Also very little variety as far as Mexican food ingredients. The store has 2 tortilla options, no chopped green chiles, and we have yet to find a truly spicy salsa. Anyway, the rainbow below gave me a little boost as I made my way up the hill pushing a sleeping Truman. That lasted about one block before I started to hate life and wonder why on earth I ever walk down that darn hill with a baby when I know I am going to have to walk up it pushing a baby.            And that's why I don't exercise.

Avebury and Tetbury

and bluebury and strawbury

A little preface. Avebury is the location of one of the oldest stone-circles. like Stonehenge, and it is also the biggest. However, it is less well-known, less visited, and as a result less protected. It was awesome! It had homes and pubs built right in the middle of it and we could walk right up to the stones and there weren't a ton of people milling about. Some of Vinny's classmates visited here and had to deal with some poor weather but we were super lucky and had sunshine nearly the whole time we were there.

Avebury Manor. We have yet to tour a fancy home in England- this one was closed. Hopefully another time!

The stones- the small little pyramids are where actual stones are missing. At some point in history England was ashamed of its pagan past and several of the stones were removed. 

A sheep pasture in the middle of it, too! I put me wellies to good use on this trip.

Family Photo. Sorry Truman.

My boys

Next was Tetbury on the way home. Just a small town with a nice church and some nice shops. Could spend more time here perusing the antique stores. 

Sick of churches? Yeah me too

My favourites

These buildings are just like a Dickens novel

Part II

That same day we headed off to Gloucester (pronounced Gloster) to see the Cathedral and eat a late lunch. The Cathedral dates back to as early as 700 A.D. It was added on to little by little. First it was a small place of worship, then it became an Abbey church of the Benedictine monastery, then King Henry VIII made it into a Cathedral because his predecessor, Edward II, was buried there. Don't worry I won't bore you much more, it has some cool pop-culture history attached to it too. Any guesses?

We thought we'd let Truman crawl around a bit after spending the morning in his car seat and stroller. The rest of the time at the cathedral anytime we picked him up we got the old arched back, flailing arms, cry loudly routine. 

Do these halls look familiar?

Harry Potter! This cathedral was used for the filming of several Harry Potter films. We recognized these halls as well as a few other spots from the movies. 

One of the largest windows from medieval times. 70% of what is viewed here is original glass. 

That little door is where they had to bring in the giant troll when they did one of the Harry Potter films (I think the troll is in the first- Jake or Dave will probably correct me). I am mostly putting this here so I don't forget why we took this picture. 

I didn't get photos of this but we went on a tour and went down into a crypt. Everything upstairs is mostly from when the building was made into a cathedral but the crypt was a basement and it showed lots of original features from its monastery days. Small little candle-holders in the walls and the tour guide pointed out where the monks would have hidden their jewels and valuable goods. Pretty interesting stuff. 

Overall it was a good day. Truman was really good and very happy all day. He had tourists taking pictures of him and he was cheesing it up. He didn't nap all day until we got in the car around 4. We wanted to let him rest longer so we missed several turns so it would take an additional 20 minutes to get home. Totally intentional. 

So I think we'll venture out again this weekend! Avebury and Bath, here we come!

Our First Outing Part I

We started small for our first outing here in England. We first went to the small town of Painswick which is only 10 minutes from Stroud. They have an old church with some pretty nice grounds where they have planted 99 yew trees (they are very Dr. Seuss-ish). The story goes that every time they have tried to plant a 100th tree, it has either died or one of the other trees have died. So there are always just 99. The grounds also had a cemetery. It was surprising to see graves dated clear back to the 1600s. The bones of a person who lived and probably had a job and family and went to church 400 years ago were right under my feet. Maybe in that time they have deteriorated? I dunno. I didn't take close-up photos of graves cuz it felt a bit creepy but here are lots of other photos.

Painswick Church of St. Mary

Like my outfit? Good cuz I wear it anytime I go somewhere. And it's all I have

This is probably the first of many churches we'll visit. They're great because they were built to be beautiful and generally hold a lot of history and they're free. 

 Then we wandered around the town of Painswick a bit.

So British. You really do see them everywhere.

Painswick had lots of cool doors

So narrow, right? And then people park on the road. And old stone looks so much better than old stucco. Sorry Vegas