Russell and Jaci in Bath

Originally, Russell and I had planned to go to Bath together, so when I went with Nicole, I was also scouting for things to do with Russell. The first part of the day was mostly an echo of what Nicole and I had done the previous Tuesday.

First, we went to the Roman Baths. I thought I had done a fairly thorough tour on my first trip, but I discovered new things the second trip as well. One notable example was a small case Nicole and I had missed with gemstones in it. The curators aren't sure whether the stones were themselves offerings to the goddess, if they had come out of jewelry that had been thrown to the goddess, or if they had fallen out of rings when people were using the baths. There was a pile of around thirty or fourty of the gems, however, and each one had a unique carving on the top. Some had zodiac signs, others had animals or sceneries. Keep in mind that these were modest sized gems. They wouldn't call attention to themselves if they were set in a modern woman's ring - the etchings were tiny. Apparently, the Romans set these stones in rings and used them for wax seals on correspondence. I had seen this sort of thing before, but the rings were much larger and the seals weren't nearly as fine and detailed. I wish I had a picture to post.

Next, we went for a walk, up the hill to the circus I mentioned before and off to the edge of the downtown area where there was another curved building of note. We wandered back to towards the center of town and saw that the Assembly Rooms were open this time. We ducked in for a look around. I don't know that the rooms would be all that impressive to the average observer. They are large enough for dancing, have pretty chandeliers and attractive wood floors but they are fairly simple in decor. I had read Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin not too long ago, though, so it was fun to see one of the places she had been describing. It was fun to envision the story taking place in that particular place.

After lunch, we ventured into a cafe we had spotted earlir, the "Cafe Rouge." This had caught our attention earlier because of a sign out front announcing Strawberry Beer. The novelty was too much to pass up. Russell couldn't bring himself to order one, but he had a sip of mine. It was quite good, but seemed more like a light punch than a beer. I imagine thats the draw.

After a bit more wandering and poking around in shops, we stopped in for a Sally Lunn's Bunn (forgot to take a picture again) and then headed to the main activity of the day: The Thermae Bath. I had looked it up online after hearing about it from our neighbors at Sally Lunn's earlier that week, an it was too tempting to pass up.

There are five levels at the Thermae Bath. The basement has a large amoeba-shaped pool with futuristic looking columns rising out of it to support the floor above (think upside down "Sorry" game pieces). The pool had a light current running through it so if you just floated it would push you around the pool. On one end, there was also another circular pool within the pool that bubbled. The temperature was about bathwater temperature. Not as hot as a hot tub.

The next floor had the dressing rooms, and next came the saunas. The sauna room was the best part. There was a shower in the middle - water rushing straight out of the ceiling and into the grate in the middle of the floor. it was big enough around that four people or so could stand under it at once. Around the shower were four glass cylinders, each with a stone bench curving around the inside whhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifere you could sit. Each cylinder was its own sauna and could seat about 10 people or five laying down. Each sauna had steam coming from under the benches and from the ceiling and was scented with a different perfume. I wasn't too sure about the scents, but they weren't too bad. There was Frankincense, Lavender, Eucalyptus Mint, and a fourth I can't remember. I avoided Lavender like the plague. Bleh. Each sauna was also a different temperature, ranging from 37C to 50C. There were also cold water showers off to one side for when you were finished.

The next floor was designated for "treatments" (meaning massages, hot stone treatments, etc. that you could add to your package) and had a cafe. Finally, there was a roof pool. It was outdoors and had a beautiful view of Bath and the surrounding hills. This certainly isn't the sort of thing we normally do, but it was well worth it. If you want to see pictures of the Thermae Bath, go to: http://www.thermaebathspa.com

An Easy Saturday

This was quite a decent weekend for Russell and I. We had talked about visiting Oxford on Saturday, but we were both too lazy getting up and wasted too much of the day to warrant the trip. Instead, we decided to go out for lunch and do some shopping around Reading.

In spite of Russell's glowing post about a local pub we had been impressed with, we haven't found that particular pub open when we were hungry since the first day. It may have been open on Saturday, but we were too hungry to walk all the way there just to be disappointed, so we decided to pop into a restaurant closer by: "Pavlov's Dog."

On entering, we discovered it wasn't a restaurant (as it had appeared from the street) but a pub! After quite a bit of trial and error we have finally figured out how to procure food from a pub. At this point in the story, Matt is going to think I'm exaggerating since he showed us how to order food in a pub when we visited him in London. Even so, we've come across enough variation, that we just weren't comfortable with the procedure. This pub was especially easy because they had their menus right on the bar to indicate that we should order there, and the menu was already turned to burgers, which was what we were hoping to find. Thing were going quite well. There were enough people around that we were part of the crowd, but it was easy to find seating (not always the case) and no one gave us odd looks. This last may have been because we had finally figured out what to do in a pub to not look like total foreigners and we were eating at the appointed lunch time.

All good!

Very pleased with ourselves, we took our time and absorbed our surroundings, which informed us that there is a £3.50 special everyday after 3:00 for a burger and a beer (the one time we were too early), and Sunday night was Quiz Show night. We also noticed that there was a farmers market going across the street, so after lunch we headed over there. It turned out to be more of a flea market (with cheap knock-off brand stuff) but there were a few vegetable and flower stands as well.

We wandered around, ducked into a video game store, and eventually made our way to the "High and Mighty" store I had spotted some time back. The full name of this store is "High and Mighty: Big or Tall store." Notice the "or." Imagining a store full of clothing Russell could try on off the rack, I dragged him in. We were both a bit disappointed. There was no lack of clothing for Russell to try on, but... well, the clothing seemed to come in two primary styles: "Mafia Don" or "Orville Redenbacher". Too bad. Russell did find a t-shirt for £70 (neither of us could justify that) and a fancy linen shirt made in Italy for £100. The Italian shirt was quite fancy, and quite unlike anything else Russell has every worn. Russell was worried he would be too self conscious to wear it, though - which is bad news when you are paying the equivalent of $200. We left empty-handed. Oh well. Better luck next time.

Nicole and Jaci in Bath

I finally got around to finishing up the previous post. I decided to leave it as a history post and tell about Nicole and my adventure in a new post. If you've already read the History post, the only new parts are the pictures and the paragraph under the [***].

On Tuesday, Nicole and I took the train to Bath. As I've already posted, Bath is famous or its hot spring. Obviously, the Roman baths are a big draw to the city, but the hot springs (as a health spa) were a draw in the Victorian era as well and that was when Bath really became known as the social center thought of today. Rich families would go to the baths for all manner of ills, and would use this as a reason to socialize with each other as well. Anyone who has read Jane Austin may have gotten a flavor of this. There's the Pump Room (where water was pumped from the spring to the new baths and people gathered to drink tea and dance during the daytime) and there were the Assembly rooms for dancing, tea and cards in the evening. Following the wealth, there were also all manner of boutiques that sprung up in the town, making it a place for fine shopping as well.

All of these attraction are still part of the character of downtown bath to some extent. The Pump Room is located right next door to the Roman Baths and is now a restaurant. The Assembly rooms are available to tour (or can be rented as an event space) and there are still all manner of boutiques lining the downtown walks. As with the earlier times, it is also still crawling with visitors.

Nicole and I started at the Roman Baths. We learned a great deal about the baths - how they were built, how they were used and maintained, and how they once looked (quite different from what is left today).

There's really too much to post about, so I'll just tell one of my favorite bits. Since there was clearly a goddess living in the spring, visitors to the spring would throw offerings into the source of the hot spring (which was off limits to bathers). In excavating and cleaning out the spring, workers found all manner of roman coins, everyday objects (like hair combs, pottery, jewelry) and these little bits of rolled up lead sheets. The lead sheets were, apparently, curses. Anyone who was angry with someone else, could write what they were angry about, ask the goddess to curse whoever was responsible, roll it up, and throw it into the spring. Many of the curses were for petty things, like clothing being stolen out of the baths, but he curses were far more severe ("may he pay for it with his own blood").

For lunch we decided to get pasties and go down to the park on the river to eat. We had to pay to get into the park, but it was worth it. The flowers were all blooming and the river was beautiful. There were a number of stripey lawn chairs set out on the grass, but I was too chicken to go commandeer one. As it turns out, they were for public use, though, so we would have been more than welcome to use them.


After lunch we walked up one of main roads lined with boutiques, stopped in a bookstore, and made our way up to the circus (a circular building divided into houses). At this point, Nicole realized she didn't have her camera anymore (you can see her just before she noticed the absence in the picture) so we retraced our steps and found it near the Roman Baths in a chocolate shop we had visited earlier.

Camera in hand, we made our way back uphill to the Assembly Rooms. Unfortunately, the rooms were closed for a function, so we couldn't get in to see them, but we did go downstairs to the Museum of Clothing. They had examples of clothing from the Victorian years up to modern times. It was interesting, but had fewer of the older dresses that interested me, and more modern dresses, which were interesting but less novel.

At this point, we were ready for a rest, so we made our way back down the hill to a tea shop that we had found recommended online. Sally Lunn's has apparently been around since the early 1800's and is famous for its sizeable buns, which can be spread with either savory or sweet toppings. We each ordered a Sally Lunn Bunn (one with strawberry jam, one with Lemon Curd) and tea. It was very fun and quite tasty. Unfortunately, I didn't have the guts to take a picture. There were just too many people around us, and it seemed rude. Later, though, we realized that we were surrounded by Americans and it probably would have been find. I imagine everyone was contemplating something similar.

Our table was about two inches from our neighbor's table - a couple with their infant daughter who were visiting from California. Seeing as we were such close proximity, we soon struck up a conversation. They told us about their visit to the Thermae Baths, which are the modern hot spring-fed baths located around the corner from the Roman Baths. I stored that information away for later.

By the time we were done with tea, most of the shops were closing up, so we headed home.

Roman Bath History

One of the things that was heartily recommended to me was a trip to Bath. Bath is a relatively small town, but it has one very special feature that have drawn people to it for centuries - the only hot spring in Great Britain.

Imagine, if you will, that you are a Celt and you find a place where the water is bubbling out of the ground, hot and making a jade green pool in the middle of a rust red landscape (from minerals) and on cold days you can't even see the water for the mist (steam) that surrounds it. How would you explain this phenomenon? The ancient Celts decided that clearly a God lived in the spring, and they were fairly certain it was Sulis, the goddess of war.

Around 100AD, when the Romans arrived, they came upon the hot spring and were equally taken with it. Having no better explanation for why hot water would bubble out of the Earth, they accepted that a goddess was living in it, though they named her after their own goddess of war, Minerva. The spring became known as Sulis Minerva and the Romans built a temple and huge bath house on the location using the water from the spring.

The bath house drew Romans from all over the empire and was a center of society in Great Britain for 400 years - however, around 500AD the Roman Empire was under attack, and they called home many of their troops from the farthest reaches of the empire. With no soldiers around, the Visigoths were able to take over and the Romans were pushed out. Unfortunately, the Visigoths were not terribly attracted to the idea of bathing, and they didn't understand the innovations in the bath nor the upkeep that was necessary, so it eventually clogged with silt, became overrun with plants, collapsed and was eventually built over.

The pattern of civilizations building in Bath, collapsing in ruin and then being built over again occurred at least one or two times more. Every time, however, the spring would make its way to the surface again and would attract people to it. At one point a huge abbey was built near the spring using the cut stones they found in the ruins.

***

During the Victorian era, a number of people with homes near the cathedral started complaining of hot water seeping into their basements. In exploring the source of the problem, workers discovered these giant lead sheets. This, of course, peaked their curiosity and they started to explore further. A well known architect of the time was called in to help with the excavation and when they realized how extensive it was, he convinced the city to buy up the houses above the site and do a full excavation. The Roman Baths were found below the city (under about 6 meters of rubble, earth, etc). The Victorians restored parts of the bath and built around it so visitors could see into the baths. Excavation continues, but there are so many important buildings around the baths that were built in later years that the full area can't be excavated. They just recently found evidence of a second temple under the abbey (seen in the photo), but obviously they can't get permission to tear the abbey down. I got the sense that this is really causing agony for the archaeologists.

The Long Walk

The first day Nicole was here we decided to go for a hike. There are a number of tempting trails that I had been considering, both through Reading and out into the country side, and finally we decided on the Thames trail. The Thames, of course, is a rather large river than cuts horizontally (more or less) through the south of England. I'm not sure where it starts, but it passes through Reading about half way to London. After consulting a few maps we decided that we would hike the trail about 5 miles up to Mapledurham House, an old mansion on the Thames that's open for tours. We also saw that there was a pub right next to it, so even though we set out a bit late (11:00) we figured we would just have a late lunch at the pub before heading back.

It was an excellent plan...

However, Mapledurham House and the pub are on the OTHER side of the Thames, this means you have to cross a foot bridge to get to them from the trail we were following. Unfortunately, when we got as far as the footbridge, there was an area cordoned off for construction. To get this far, we had taken a detour through some neighborhoods and actually come out farther down-river from the bridge, so we decided it was possible that if we approached the bridge from the other side of the trail, we could still access it. This was not the case. The construction must have been specifically for the bridge because we couldn't get any closer to it than the picture. At this point, we were quite disappointed and more than a little peckish.

Before we left, we took some pictures of Mapledurham House (and the pub) from accross the Thames. The next closest bridge was back where we had started, five miles downriver. Instead, we decided to give up and head into town for food. At one point we had been detoured from the path because it went through private property, and there had been a restaurant right at that detour. We made our way back to it, but found in was closed for renovations. Great. We continuted on. After another mile or two we started getting back into civilization. We stopped at several pubs, but were out of luck once again. It was not about 3:30 in the afternoon and pubs, in general, don't serve food between 2:00 and 5:00. We had missed lunch hour. Even the fast food places and restaurants we passed were closed. Finally, we gave up. We were too tired to keep walking, so we tried one more pub and when they told us they were no longer serving food, we just ordered a cider and spent an hour playing Set in the corner and very aggressively not walking.

Refreshed, we headed home. On the way, we passed by Todd and Sweeney's, a pie shop that Russell had found good reviews for online. We had tried to patronize them on Sunday, but they were closed, so we took the opportunity to duck in Monday and get dinner. Now, when I say "pie shop" I mean meat pies, not dessert pies. They had around fifteen different individual size savory pies to pick from. We got steak and kidney pie, steak and cheese pie, and Vicar's pie (which had an assortment of meats and vegetables). Nicole also bought a steak and potato pastie, which we devoured before we got home.

In spite of being foot sore and hungry, however, it was a very nice hike. We saw a lot of interesting things along the river, On the path side (south side) there were mostly just fields between the river and the railway, but on the north side of the river, there were all sorts of houses. Some of them were broken down shacks that must have been there for ages, and others were clearly well maintained vacation homes. There were flower gardens and boats to see, and one house even had its own helicopter. Neither Nicole or I thought to pull out our cameras for this (we were too busy gawking) but as we rounded on this one particularly fancy house, we could see the top of the helicopter and propeller sticking out over a hedge. We have no idea how they got it back there... there was very little room around it for taking off and landing, but they had managed to nest it in there somehow. There were also a good number of water birds, mostly swans, out on the river. We got to wach the swans taking off from the water. It was quite impressive. No small feat, to be sure. They would flap as hard as they could, and run along the water to help pick up speed. It was almost painfull watching them, they needed so much runway to get airborne.

Back Again

I can't believe how long I've neglected the blog...

This last week has been rather low-key. Russell was sick all week, and decided to stay home from work on Tuesday and again on Friday. He seems to be mostly better today, which is good because, as of today, we have company. Russell's friend Nicole is visiting from New Hampshire (she just got in this afternoon).

Today we did a standard walking tour of downtown Reading and then spent the evening catching up and playing games. I think Nicole and I will be going on a few hikes in and around the city over the next few days, so I will make sure to keep the blog updated.

In the meantime, we have two new cheeses to rate:

Wensleydale: A mellow, somewhat wet and crumbly cheese.
Russell: ❍❍❍❍❍
Jaci: ❍❍❍❍❍
Nicole: ❍❍❍❍

Leicester: Tangy, not unlike cheddar. This one is good, but not outstanding in any way.
Russell:❍❍❍
Jaci: ❍❍❍
Nicole: ❍❍❍

As an update, I'm afraid I have to significantly lower my rating of White Stilton. While it is rich and delicious, it was a bit too rich and therefore too easy to overdose on. We haven't been able to revisit the second half of the wedge... and we may not be able to. This is notably different from the Wensleydale (which we have already started our second wedge of within a weeks time).
Revised rating:
Russell: ❍❍
JaciL: ❍❍❍
Nicole: ❍❍❍

Cheeeeeese!

Faced with a variety of foreign (to us) cheeses, Russell and I have decided to work our way through them. And what fun is it to work your way through a variety of cheeses without sharing your impressions? I was hoping to include a "Cheese-Meter" on the blog listing what we had tried and what ratings both Russell and I gave each cheese... Russell felt this was overkill and voted instead for just posting to the blog. Since I'm too lazy to make my own Cheese-Meter, I guess posting will have to do.

So here's what we've tried (rated in wheels of cheese with a max of 5):

Double Gloucester - cheddar texture, but with a tangy bite to it.
Russell:
❍❍❍❍❍
Jaci:
❍❍❍

Red Leicester - cheddar texture, but creamier
Russell:
❍❍❍❍
Jaci:
❍❍❍❍

White Stilton with Cranberrys - practically a dessert... this cheese is fairly soft, very creamy, and the cranberrys add sweetness.
Russell:
❍❍❍
Jaci:
❍❍❍❍❍

A good pub

Feeling cooped up, we just went on a walk down oxford street and back. Oxford street is a very interesting place, home to "The Music Man" (closed, but we'll return) and many many many kebab shops. We haven't had kebab here, but we will soon. There's a place right next the station that tantalizes me every evening.

On the way back we found a pub who's name I forget where you can get a pint for a mere £2.45, with nice not-skeevy atmosphere. The beer was warm, but I guess that's how it is here. Jaci had London's Pride (nutty, came in a pilsner glass, tasted very good at that temperature) and I had a Bombadier (unremarkable, but kicked afterwards, would've been good cold). It's very close to our apartment - we'll definitely return.

And... Back to London?

I'm too lazy to post any photos today, but I had a good adventure, so I thought I would at least write about it.

After returning from London this weekend, Russell and I realized we still had Matt's camera in our backpack. Damn. So today I used the fact that the maid was coming to clean our apartment as an excuse to head back to London to return the camera. Of course, that only took about 45 minutes and the train ticket cost 28 pounds (roughly $56) so I certainly wasn't just going to head home again.

My first plan was to go to the National Museum of Art. This was touted as one of London's best displays of European paintings from the 15th-19th centuries. It did not dissapoint. Of course, I was most impressed with their Spanish artwork... but I'm biased, aren't I? It was fun watching a curator make bunny ears with a bunch of kindergarteners in the 15th century art alcove. I never did figure out what that was all about, but the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly. There were quite a few school groups, actually. I eavesdropped on several of them.

I finished at the art museum around 1:00 and after a quick lunch, headed to Kensington Park. In my mind I envisioned a private garden that you had to pay to get into, but this wasn't the case at all. In fact, Hyde Park pretty much becomes Kensington Garden if you keep going far enough. The only barrier between them is a narrow road. It was largely just more grass, trees and foot paths (not that there's anything wrong with that... and who can beat free?). At the far end of the park was Kensington Palace, and since I still had time before anyone would miss me at home, I decided to take the tour. The first floor was quite dissapointing. It felt like touring through any older house with no furniture in it. The lighting wasn't terribly good, the rooms were small and cramped... I was regretting having paid so much to get in. But then I hit the second floor. Guess where the King and Queen lived? While there was still a general lack of furniture (with a few exceptions) there were huge paintings on the walls and ceilings, interesting shaped rooms, information about the royalty that had lived there, a painting of a fat Venus... it was great.

Apparently Kensington was bought by the William the III to get away from the smog of the city (it was a country estate at the time... not anymore). Sir Christopher Wren added onto the place and in 1718 and George I (who had the strongest influence on the current state of the building that's open to the public) had a great deal of interior work done by William Kent, including paintings both directly on the ceilings and walls and more traditional paintings. Different royals had different relationships to Kensington Palace (some lived there extensively while Queen Anne hated the place because her husband died there), but to this day parts of the palace are still in use as a royal residence. Charles and Diana lived there until they divorced (at which point, Diana continued to live there until her death). Its odd to think that on the other side of the "do not enter" sign could be someone's home... but I imagine they leave a wide berth between the royals and the plebes.

After exploring Kensington I hiked back to the Subway and came home. I need to get some better shoes if I'm going to keep doing this much walking...

Back in Reading

We finished up our long weekend in London and as of Tuesday are back in Reading.

Unfortunately, our Internet connection in London was acting up, so I couldn't post anything new for a while, but it was a great weekend. Here's what we did:


Sunday: We started the morning off with a nice Cadburry Egg breakfast. We knew many places would be closed for Easter, but the Tate Museum of Modern Art was going to be open, so we made plans to go there. We walked along the south side of the Thames to get there and then spent several hours exploring the free exhibits. The central exhibit (located in the expansive central open area) consisted of a variety of clear plastic slides taht started from various different stories of the building and spiraled down to the first floor. You can see the photo of two of the five slides. The slides off of the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors were the most popular and you had to get a ticket in advance for a time slot to use them. We never got around to this, but we did try the second story slide. We lucked out - it was the last day of that particular exhibit.

We crossed the Millenium Bridge (pedestrian only, and quite cool looking) to get back to the North side of the river, and went by St. Paul's cathedral. We had been by St. Paul's earlier in the weekend, but this time we had our camera and were able to get a picture. By this time, things were really closing up, so we went home and ordered dinner in.

Monday: We decided to hit a few of the larger tourist sites we had so far missed. First, we went to (and this time actually went in) Westminster Abbey. One of the major draws of the Abby (other than its beautiful architecture, of course, are all of the famous tombs it houses. Many past kings and queens are burried there, as well as other people of note (Handel, Laurence Olivier, Chaucer, Isaac Newton, the guy who invented Penicillin, etc.) The church was packed with plaques, tombs and statues on the floors, in the walls, in the chapels, everywhere. It makes one pause to wonder where the future monarchs think they're going to squeeze in...

Another item of interest in the church is the coronation throne. I can't remember who had the throne built, but all monarchs since have sat on the throne (with the Stone of Scone from Scotland set inside it) for thier coronation. We overheard a tour guide talking about the coronation of Elizabeth II. Apparently the Abbey is only big enough to seat 2,000 people maximum, but there were, of course, far more people (and people of import, for that matter) that wanted to be in attendance, so the Abby shut down for some months (4? 6?) before the coronation in order to build seating for 8,000. The seating apparently reached as high as the stained glass rose window (which you can see if you look for the photo of the North Entrance about half-way down the wikipedia page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_abbey

After Westminster Abbey, we walked over to Buckingham palace. There wasn't much to see here. The changing of the guards appaerently only happens on even days, so we missed that. The guards on duty were up against the main building, which was a good distance away from the front gate. We watched one guard be relieved, but it wasn't terribly exciting. The flag was up, though, so the queen must have been in there somewhere.

Next we walked to Hyde park and strolled around a bit. We walked to the speaker's corner and listened to three different speeches being given. Apparently anyone who wants to speak is free to do so, and others come specifically to listen and debate with the speakers. It was interesting to listen in. The speakers were quite passionate, though some were considerably more focused than others.

We ended the weekend by going to Spam-a-Lot, the theatrical version of Monty Python's Holy Grail. It was a fun show. Much of the material was pulled directly from The Holy Grail, but there was a healthy dose of new material and pieces from other Monty Python sketches mixed in as well.

We caught the midnight train back to Reading and Russell was off to work the next morning, bright and early. I was luckier, I got to spend the day resting after the long weekend. :) It was great. Today, I decided to be adventurous again, though, and I ventured to the OTHER side fo the train tracks *gasp.* I walked through two parks, one was a groomed family park with swans, ducklings and a playground along the Thames, while the other was on a hill with a beautiful view of the city and a nice uphill hike into the trees.

The Tower of London

We got off to a slow start this morning, so we dedicated the whole day to the Tower of London. The tower of London has had a number of jobs over the years, including housing the royal family (they still have a building within the walls as private quarters, though I doubt they often visit). The tower has also been a prison, gunpowder and munitions storage, and is now the home of the crown jewels of England, various kings' armor, all manner of guns/canons/spears/swords, etc. and torture instruments. Most of this list (minus the Crown Jewels) are housed in the White Tower, which is the central building in the Tower of London and the one you see in the first picture.

Both the first and second picture are taken from the outer wall of the Tower of London. The second picture is overlooking the Thames and the Tower Bridge. Incidentally, this is not the London Bridge, as you might assume if, like me, you've never bothered to find out. The London Bridge is just a nice wide, flat bridge. Much less impressive. I'll post a picture on one of my slow days.

So back to the Tower of London. Now we can say we've seen the Great Star of Africa, which was the largest polished diamond in the world until 1985 and which is mounted in the head of the 'Sceptre with the Cross' that makes up part of the Crown Jewels of England. All told, its a very impressive collection, and the Star of Africa is only one part. We did, however, find ourselves hard-pressed to leave a donation in the Crown Jewel's collection box. (yes, there is one)

Oh. And yes, we also saw King Henry VIII's armored codpiece.


We spent at least four hours in the Tower of London. On our walk home (Matt's hotel is an easy walk away, as it turns out) we came accross this excellently named pub, The Hung, Drawn and Quartered. This was about a two blocks from the Tower of London (as can only be expected of a pub by this name) but it was closed. It was too good to pass without a picture, though, so we contented ourselves with that and then went home to rest. After re-hydrating (we weren't about to spring for $3 lemonade in the tower) we headed out to another important stop on our list of places to visit: The Texas Embassy.


Now, Matt's from Texas, so this was especially important. The Texas Embassy is a restaurant close to Trafalgar square that boasts authentic TexMex cuisine. They did a fair job of it, too. You can see Matt and Russell with a chicken fried steak and "Tres Amigos" burrito plate, respectively. Matt is somewhat screened by steam from my fajita. The atmosphere seemed to meet with Matt's approval as far as theme restaurants go, and we spent some time wondering at how odd it felt to be in such a restaurant - yellow cowboy hats aside. Matt plans to mail them a liscence plate to add to their collection.

And for dessert: "Paco's Chocolate Revenge."

Off to London

The next four days are holiday for many (including Russell and Matt) so we took off for London with an eye for Matt's floor and some sightseeing. Can't beat a free place to stay.

Once we got to London, we ditched our things at Matt's place and headed out to explore. Unfortunately, in our excitement, none of us remembered to bring a camera, so pictures will have to wait until tomorrow. Originally, we were planning to go to the Tate Modern, so we weren't terribly concerned with our lack of cameras. However, as it turned out, we were a little turned around (having gone out to find food first and venturing farther than we realzed) and even though we had looked at a map, we walked away from the Tate. In fact, when we first hit the Thames we saw the tower associated with the Tate, mocked it, and turned to go further up the river. What crazy Americans we are.

We still made good use of our afternoon, however, with a stroll up the Thames, some admiration from afar of the London Eye, and some admiration from up close of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. We took the tube home, did grocery shopping for much needed provisions (pubs are closed on Good Friday) and now we're just gearing up for a nice comfortable night at home. (Hey, we've still got three days left, cut us some slack).

Victory

On my third venture to the library I returned victorious!


I got a bit overzealous picking out books, though... I should have just chosen one and been content with that, but there were so many good options! Plus they had DVDs (for a small fee). There were a number of fairly recent releases, too, so I don't mind the fee. I decided to start my reading with with Mansfield Park (as Jane Austen had come highly recommended to me before I left Oregon). So far I've read about 300 pages in the last 24 hours (of which sleeping, eating, cooking, and taking long walks was also a part). Not bad. I should have it done today and I'll be on to my next one.

After reading all day, I thought it might be nice to go stretch my legs, so I went for a walk in a new direction. I looked at a map before I went and saw that there was an "Abbey Ruin" next to a park. The weather was very nice today (sunny with a light breeze) so walking seemed the thing to do, and going to a park even better. As it turns out the park is the best upkept I've seen so far. It even had plaques around to give historical information about the surroundings (of which there was quite a bit). One thing that caught my eye was Jane Austin's name. She appaerntly went to school in one of the buildings across the way. What a coincidence. (I forgot my camera or I would post pictures.)

I walked through the park on my way to the Abbey, hopping from plaque to plaque. It was originally constructed in 1100-something by (and I may not be remembering this correctly) Henry I (who was later burried there in 1134 (or thereabouts). At first it looked like there were a few scant (though tall) arches left of the original building, which I went and inspected. The picture of the original building was enormous, and another well-placed plaque said that it had only fallen to the current level of ruin because people scavenged building materials from it sometime in the 1700s. After reading this, I set off on my walk again, convinced I had seen it all. The Abby didn't stop there, though. It turns out there is still a sizeable portion of it left standing that had just been out of my view. It was almost a city block of stone walls-turned-park. I'll make sure to take my camera with me next time to better illustrate what I mean. I was quite impressed.

Blog Update

So everyone knows, I have changed the blog to allow comments from anyone (not just members of blogger). So if you had problems posting a comment before, it should work this time.

Our Neighborhood

I've had a request to post pictures of the neighborhood where we live. Luckily, I just a variety of such pictures yesterday.


The first shot is of our street. You can just see the corner of our building if you look down the road. its that very last sliver of a building lit up by the sun. I'll try to remember to take an actual picture of the building, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like for Russell and I as we walk home. You can see one of the entrances to the mall we live behind/next to (it wraps around us) in the foreground.


On the other side of the mall there are a number of higher-end stores lined up along a pedestrian street. As you can see, it has a bit of old world flavor above the stores, but this is definitely the trendy part of Reading. Some of the stores include the Body Shop, Clarks (as in shoes), specialty chocolate makers, and every mobile phone company and its spin off you could possibly want. There are easily eight different cell phone companies packed into the equivalent of two blocks... we had to give up on our cell phone shopping the first day we were in Reading simply because we were overwhelmed. I kid you not.


This last photo is of the grocery store we frequent. It tooks some Internet investigating to locate it because it blended in so well with the other shopping. We walked by it a number of times without realizing it sold groceries. We were happy to discover it is only a few blocks from our apartment. I actually took the first and third picture of this post standing on the same corner. I will probably have another grocery store post shortly, but I have to say, I love having a small grocery store close by that sells SMALL portions. I was able to buy a two-cup bag of flour, marinara sauce for two, etc. Things I normally have to overbuy in the states and hope I can use them up before they go bad.

The downside to the small grocery store is that it lacks in some areas. At the moment, there seems to be a serious absense of vanilla extract. This may not seem serious to some, but once you get a hankerin' for homemade chocolate chip cookies, this becomes a grave issue. It also lead me on my adventure of the day - on a five mile (round trip) hike to the nearest supermarket in hopes that THEY might have vanilla extract. Luckily they did. This also got me out into the city for some sightseeing and a nice long walk. Plus, I discovered that I could get two liters of hard cider for the same ammount it had cost to get a pint of the same in the local pub. So in the cart went THAT.

A Library Card

In the past, I've always thought of getting a library card as a fairly mundane thing. You go in, maybe show some ID, give contact information, and you're all set up. Perhaps assuming it would go the same in the UK was naive on my part. After all, I am a foreigner and there is the chance I will abscond with the British people's public reading material to some foreign country where they will never see it again.

I did not fully appreciate the threat I must pose when I entered the library.

At first, everything seemed straight forward enough... I would need to show two forms of ID - one with my signature and photo on it (they prefer a passport) and a piece of mail with my name and current residence on it. This last bit was a problem since we have received no mail and everything is likely to come in Russell's name anyway. I was still confident that this could be worked out, however. I explained that I was here for three months with my husband and I didn't have any mail yet. I got an appraising look and was asked if my husband was here on business. I assured them that he was, at which point they asked if there wasn;t anything at all that might connect MY name to the apartment we were staying in. I explained that there wasn't, but remembered that we did have the leasing agreement from the company with Russell's name on it. I asked if this might work just as well. The lady said that it would, provided I filled out a slip of paper with signatures. Perfectly happy with this outcome, I returned home to get the letter proving residence.

I returned to the library and spoke with a new woman. I proudly displayed my proof of residence and two pieces of ID. The woman I was speaking with looked deeply concerned, and said she would have to check with her senior co-worker. The senior co-worker turned out to be the lady I had talked with earlier. She looked at my proof of residence and said, no, this just woudn't do. I would need to pair it with a signature from Russell verifying that I was indeed living with him and authorizing me to check out books to our apartment.

So now I'm waiting for Russell to come home and give me permission to check out books. I suppose its not that big of a deal, but I'm still a bit bent out of shape over it. I don't remember it being this difficult to get a UK visa... Oh well. Can't be helped.

Our First Weekend

Our first weekend in Reading went quite well. As it turns out, one of Russell's friends from college (Matt) is in London on business, so he came and visited us this weekend.
For the most part we walked all over Reading. Here's what we were up to:

First, we contacted Matt in London. This didn't happen until afternoon on Saturday, so it was late afternoon before he made it into town. Once he got here, we headed out on a stroll to explore a bit further into Reading proper. We ended up finding the Kennet on Avon canal and following that through neighborhoods to the Thames. This seemed like quite the hike at the time, but we've since learned better.

Once we got back into town we decided to try the Indian food place near our apartment (which we had miraculously discovered only a block away by walking THE OTHER DIRECTION on the street our apartment is on. It was truly an Earth shattering moment for us. We were so close to good food (and pubs, and a huge old church etc) but hadn't noticed yet. In any case, we went to the Indian restaurant but found it was closed for another 20 minutes, so we hopped into a local public house and had a pint while we waited. Once the restaurant opened, we headed in and were treated to an excellent spread of Indian food. High marks for this restaurant, we will definitely go back.

We ended the day doing laundry and hanging out at home. Some of the highlights included learning how to use the laundry machine, realizing just how long it took to do laundry using said machine and eating treacle sponge from a can. First the laundry. I assumed a washing machine would take 30 minutes. With this in mind, I threw some towels in to clean around 9:00pm - assuming there would be plenty of time for Matt to get his cloths washed before bed. Two loads, three hours. It was something else. We had a good time while we waited, though, including eating the can of treacle sponge cake I had bought at the grocery store the first day. I had been completely unaware that treacle was a real comestible (outside of Harry Potter books) until I saw a post about it on Slashfood (a food blog I read). According to Slashfood, Heinz makes a canned treacle sponge cake that is readily available in the UK - and so it was! As it turns out, its quite good. The treacle is a sort of grainy syrup that (at least in this context) is poured over a sponge cake.

All of the laundry was hung to dry, but we were fairly certain they wouldn't dry on their own without help, so we put them in the bathroom with the door closed and the heat turned up. This didn't work. This morning, the laundry was, perhaps, dryer than it would have been , but not so dry that you would want to wear it. This led to an experiment: can one BAKE clothing? Turns out, you can! We set the oven to a low temperature and put the towels (as showers were the first order of business) on a pan. It took the towels a long time because I was nervous about turning the heat up, but once we moved from 50C to 75C, things went much better. The towels were still a bit damp, but useable. From now on, however, I will try to just do laundry long before I need it and let it dry on the rack. A lesson learned.

We hung around the apartment for a while and then set off on our next adventure - lunch followed by a hike to the University of Reading.

We had decided on where to eat lunch the day before. A pub around the corner from our apartment had a sign outside saying it served roast on Sundays. We went there today, and it was tasty. There were vegetables, a large thin slice of roast beef smothered in gravy and Yorkshire pudding. The meal also came with desert, but we opted out. Fortified by lunch and hard cider, we set out on the next leg of our journey - the University of Reading.

This turned out to be significantly farther away (and more uphill) than our previous walk to the Thames. It was worth it, though. The campus is spread out over quite a large piece of land. There are large swaths of grass and a small lake on the campus with short trails to walk along. We stopped several times to watch birds, some of which were alltogether new to us. As it turns out, swans seem to be rather common place along waterways here, as are ducks and canadian geese. We also watched a small, black water bird with a white beak and white tuft of feathers on its forhead build a nest in some low hanging branches on the water. As we rounded the pond, we came accross the family of water fowl pictured. They appear to be some sort of geese, but I'm not sure what kind.

The buildings are spotted all over the property and there are quite a few. They range from stately old buildings, such as the one shown, to the more modern, blocky brick buildings you often see on US campuses. I'll try to take more pictures later. The one I have posted here is a bit misleading because of its age and style. There were a handful of buildings like this, but the bulk of the university is looks about like any other university - just much more spread out. Buildings seemed to be in small clusters all around a remarkable green space.

All told we walked roughly a four mile loop. After we made it home, we just crashed for a bit, did crosswords, played on the computer, and rested until Matt returned to London. Tomorrow Russell heads back to work, so I'll have to figure out a plan of action for myself.