Picture Post!

7/4/09 9:42 AM

Dear Family,

Why do you have to love books? Why couldn't you have loved something lighter, like tea towels?

Love

Aimin

Me, in my mirror, with a camera and my new haircut. Short!

This lovely tree is in the churchyard of St. Thomas'. I pass it when I go shopping.

Who's that? Why, it's my family! Jean (mother), Mary (sister), and Seth (not sister). We're on a land train to go from the entrance of Leeds Castle to the castle itself.

Oops, thought I had a picture of the castle, but I forgot to shrink it...

London! We've got the London Eye, Big Ben, and the houses of Parliament. What more could you ask for in a single shot?

The Rosetta Stone, at the British Museum. THE Rosetta Stone, and not a facsimile. :)

The HMS Victory. You weren't allowed to take pictures inside it, and the pictures I have from on deck weren't that exciting.

The Roman Baths of Bath, outside. The baths themselves are 20 ft down, due to civilizations being built on civilizations.

This is the Great Bath. It's lead-lined to keep the water from draining away and to keep cold ground water from seeping in. The water is constantly flowing out from an overflow and new water flowing in from the spring.

The water flows through this channel (see the rust?)

And into the baths.

The Sacred Spring now, also known as the King's Bath. This is a resevoir and settling tank, allowing the spring water to come up, the sediment to settle at the bottom, and then the water from the top drains into the baths and into another overflow. Too much water comes up just for the many baths here, so the Romans built a separate overflow to take the excess water to the River Avon, just a few hundred metres away.

This is that overflow. Again, look at the rust! Also look at the steam!

Only about the lower five feet of this structure is original Roman. The rest is Victorian. Around the terrace above are Victorian statues of people who may have stood there. This one is Julius Caesar.

He's not Victorian.

Caesar's about 18 years old. One day about eighteen years ago, a guide gestured toward Caesar to point him out to his group, and he noticed that Caesar wasn't there! They didn't find him for a couple weeks, when they drained the baths (they do this every 6-8 weeks), and they found him inside, smashed, on the bottom. Oops. So he's a new guy.

At the baths, they also had some costumed actors. Here is a Roman aristocrat lady and her slave, enjoying a relaxing visit.

Even though the water is murky and ICK (don't stare at it too long on the edges if you don't like slime and skins and floating-vomit-looking-things), it still reflects beautifully if you're there on a sunny spring day.

Why are there stacks of tiles?

Ah, that's why! Central heating!

This is a cold-spring-fed bath as you leave, now used to take coin donations from visitors. It's pretty, and absolutely covered in coins.

A model of what the complex may have been like in the Roman era (except without the cutaways). The large central building is the Great Bath.

The very Victorian entrance hall. Lovely.

Bath Abbey.

Lovely fan vaulting in the Abbey.

Too many memorials!

Another little church in Bath that caught my eye.

And finally, as I was sitting in the train, I glanced out the window and saw...

White chalk horse! I tried to get a good shot, and I really like this one:

Everything is in the way of everything except for one small gap where you can see the entire horse.

This was exciting, because I knew the horse was out there somewhere, but every time in the past five years that I've ridden a train in this area, I've always missed it. It was a chance glance that time, and I saw it! Whee!

Someone didn't know how to spell.

And finally:

Walker's potato crisps?

Cajun Squirrel wasn't too bad. Not something I'd eat regularly, but 3/5? Edible, and would do in a pinch.

Fish and Chips: Meh. Fish. And chips. 3/5, edible again.

Crispy Duck and Hoisin? 3/5. Again.

Builder's Breakfast wins for me!

Debby:

I'm leaving the UK on Monday, April 13, that's the Monday after Easter. Have fun in Bath! Definitely try the water in the pump room.