Brighton to Buckingham Palace

The restrictions have eased somewhat, so we've been taking a few more liberties to head out and stray a little farther from home, at least for a day trip. So for the Easter long weekend, we decided we'd go to Brighton. It was a cold day, and as most facilities are still closed, we knew there wouldn't be much to do, but Brighton is only about an hour away by train and is on the English channel, so we thought at least we'd be able to walk along the pebble beach and just enjoy a chance of scenery. We dressed quite warm since we would have nowhere to go and warm up if we needed, and we did enjoy a nice day there. I had been to Brighton once before, 20 years ago, when I visited a friend who was studying here, and the beach area largely looks the same. That trip was my first real overseas trip travelling and having to get around mostly alone, so at that time, I couldn't have compared it to anywhere else I've been, but since then, I've been to so many other places in the world, and I can say that it now reminds me of Atlantic City on a morning after the nightlife has come to its bitter end. Rather than explain it all here, I've included this link to my blog archive from 2008 when I was there for work. You'll just have to scroll down a little to find that entry as when I lost access to my blog, I copied and pasted and then just grouped them by month or by trip. The main difference is that Brighton doesn't really have the casino scene, but there were some fairly sad looking characters, and parts of the shore area look quite run down. It would have been shiny and sparkly in its heyday, just like Atlantic City, and I'm sure that just like Atlantic City, it will look alive and happy when it's filled with people. I've only been to all these locations in the fall or spring when there isn't much happening, so I can't wait to go back to Brighton in the summer when I'm sure it will look more hopeful.

Little did we know that by the end of the week, we would hear the news about Prince Philip. It's a small wonder, given he was in hospital for a month and had only maybe been home for a month longer, and was almost 100 years old. He looked rather ghastly in the photos that the news agencies were able to take of him in the vehicle when he was returning from hospital, so we figured he might not have a lot of time left on this earth. 

We'd had a couple of errands to do on the day after HRH's death, so we decided to head out on our bikes to take care of those. We're still not expert cyclists for London, still getting used to traffic here, but we love being able to do errands on our bikes as we can go to several locations much more efficiently than on public transport and much more quickly than by walking. One of the errands was to check out Pimlico Market, which someone had recommended to me. We discovered that we were fairly out of place there in our cycling gear. People were quite dressed up, and there was even a booth selling oysters there! One of the people quite dressed up was the classic English countryman; he looked out of place at the market, but had he been on a footpath in the countryside, he would have looked much more natural. But his outfit was most excellent, his tweed trousers, sport coat, and newsboy cap all matching, and he even had an ascot. I had to take a selfie just to get him in the shot, but I ensured that his face was obscured for my post because I don't often feel comfortable posting people's faces or even taking their photos without their permission. But I needed to demonstrate how traditionally some people still dress here. 

After we had completed our errands, we decided to head off to Buckingham Palace. We thought it would be good to pay respects, but as this is a historic time in Britain's history, we also wanted to just be there to see what was going on and be part of the atmosphere that the death of such a royal entails. It was subdued, and people were respectful. One could lay flowers, and the police had set up a way to let people through a barrier a few at a time to ensure everyone's safety. We also saw a series of tents set up at the edge of Green Park that faces the palace, all set up for the media. There were probably at least 10 tents or so. We looked for the CBC and CTV, as they do have correspondents based in London, but were unable to locate them. Below is a panorama of the scene to give you an idea what it looked like near the palace, anyway. There weren't nearly as many people as there would be but for the pandemic, but most of the people were locals and foreigners like us who are temporarily living here, so it was interesting to witness that aspect of the aftermath of the death.

Spring is in the air - and hope

Magnolia tree, primroses beneath

The end of the lockdown will be sweet. While it will happen in stages, as has often happened in the past, every step will be welcome. From tomorrow, we can finally meet people outdoors again. This is great, as I've started to meet some of the other people in the ex-pat community, and it will be nice to have a chance to meet some of them in person as we have so far only been meeting online. Little by little, as the vaccines are doled out to greater populations, we'll experience some semblance of social life again.

 I haven't had a lot to write about lately for this reason--one can only write so much about just walking around one's neighbourhood. I've posted Facebook photos, mostly flowers and birds, for friends and family, but I haven't had much of a story to share that the pictures couldn't tell, themselves. The collection of those photos, though, caused my mom to comment to me yesterday that you get the impression that London isn't just a concrete jungle with all the nature photos I tend to post. It was such a great comment, because that is exactly what I have been trying to show in my blog and my photos, the exposition of a city that most people, unless they are Londoners, would typically not see. I mean think about it: when you come to visit the city, you want to see the museums and other attractions. Those types of places are generally surrounded by other buildings. As a result, you're not going to see the neighbourhood parks or spend much time at the river to see what all these areas have to offer. And there's nothing wrong with that, because London is expensive, and you have to pack in as much as you can into the typically short time people spend here, perhaps a week or so. So one doesn't have the time to explore small neighbourhoods or wonder, much less find, where the green spaces are. Nevertheless, these spaces exist. 

Hyde Park daffodils

One thing we've discovered is how much people here love to get their outdoor time. In all the seasons we've been here, we've seen people go outside to read a book. It's not uncommon to see someone reading a book on a bench by the river or in one of the parks, whether they set up a blanket on the ground or sit on a bench. I suspect that with it being cloudy here so much of the time, and the fact that their milk is not fortified with vitamin D like ours back in Canada, that people want to get out and soak up whatever sunlight or daylight they can. And Sunday afternoons are for family outings. Now I don't know what people do when there's not a pandemic, if they are going for walks in parks or if that has just increased since the pandemic began, but the parks are definitely full of families on a Sunday afternoon and often on a Saturday afternoon, too. In fact, I actually try to avoid the parks on those days because there are too many people that I find it difficult to enjoy, especially if there are birds I want to hear or see. But it's lovely to see so many people out; while there seem to be these little parks everywhere, and some large ones here and there, green space is still at a premium in London, so it's something that locals take full advantage of using when they can. 

Chiondoxa, or "Glory of Snow"

While winters here are mild enough that there are a few flowers that seem to grow outdoors, such as petunia/ivy baskets, pansies, cyclamen, and mahonia x media winter sun, but then when spring flowers emerge, there seem to be droves of them in places.  As you can see, I've scattered a few samples of them throughout this post. Thousands of daffodils bloom as well as crocuses, snowdrops, hyacinth, and more recently, cherry blossoms and magnolias. The daffodils are particularly well-timed, as they seem to be blooming everywhere just before the 1st of March, which is St David's Day in Wales, and it so happens that the daffodil is Wales's national flower. They have many varieties of them here, too, from tiny, delicate narcissus types to giant daffodils, and all with different shades and combos of white, yellow, and orange cups and petals. It's quite beautiful!

Battersea Park cherry blossoms

The next flower I'm looking forward to seeing is wisteria. I remember when I stayed with my friend back in 2006 in May, the area of London she lived in, I remember this one high stone wall around a property that was festooned with wisteria, and it was like being rained on by lavendar-coloured flowers as they so gracefully hung down in their vine-y fashion. In any case, this is a London I'm happy to share with you because even if you come visit me, you might not be here in this season, or again, have time to enjoy the green spaces. 

Crocuses at Vauxall park

More walking around

The UK's lockdown is set to end next month. I believe we will be adopted a phased re-opening, but we're excited about it, even if it is gradual, especially since the country has vaccinated so many millions of people already. I don't think we'll be booking multiple vacations yet, but at least there will be more to do, and at some point, I'd really like to get a trim on my hair if not a proper cut and dye job. I last cut my hair in August, and while the home hair colour kits do a good job, it's hard for me to get all the parts of my hair properly, and there are always grey spots here and there.

While the weather was a bit chilly (dare I say cold and offend my friend and family back home who just made it through over a week of temps around -30ºC!), I wasn't as motivated to go for walks, but from time to time my husband and I would try to get some fresh air. On one of our walks, we discovered that a fountain in a nearby park doesn't seem to get turned off despite the colder weather, so it ended up freezing up somewhat, but the effect was really pretty. I normally don't like to be in the photos I both take and post, but my husband's phone has the option for a wide-angle lens photo, and I liked the effect. 

We go to a nearby butcher for our Sunday roast, something that's a common practice here, and we decided to take a different route. I was sure glad we did, because we ended up coming across a small patch of bright, yellow-orange crocuses. I have seen daffodils blooming for some time now, and I had seen snowdrops here and there both budding and in bloom, but this was something I hadn't yet spotted. The photos couldn't do it justice. You'd probably have to have a pretty fancy professional camera with the knowledge of how to use it properly to capture the way the light hit these flowers. My husband described it as being almost phosphorescent. It's such a unique colour that I haven't seen anywhere else.

On another walk, I noticed a plaque on one of the houses. If you've never been to London before, there are plaques all over the place on various buildings and home. Many famous historical figures have lived and/or worked in the various buildings so marked, but this one was a little different. It was a memorial, rather than a description of someone that lived there. Many other memorials are for war efforts in England or as part of wars in Europe, Africa, and Asia, but this one is for none other than Nicaragua! I had to search Google to see if I could find out more information because the plaque doesn't really tell me enough of what I want to know, and I came across this one site that appears to be some sort of blog, and it had more information and links to more information as well. One of those links is a brochure for the original finished project with photos of the interior. It actually looks quite nice inside! I also learned through that brochure that the vulture looking down from there is not just a pigeon scaring device but actually appears to be part of the design of Nicaragua House. Anyway, it's an interesting little tidbit that is not really along the tourist path, but these are the little nuggets I love to come across in my wanderings around the world.

Churches, old and new

During lockdown, one of the things you're allowed to do is go outside for exercise a maximum of once a day, and you're able to go with one other person outside your bubble if you want to. My husband is my built-in exercise partner, and so we sometimes go out for a bike ride. We enjoy cycling in London because there are so many bike lanes now, and many of them are clearly marked with some even having safety barriers. Part of the reason for this are these "cycle superhighways" that have been created in the city. They make cycling so easy and safe, but the only thing I wish about them is that they were all connected so you could do circuits. Perhaps that will happen sometime in the future. Anyway, as a result of being able to exercise outside, we've been able to discover some interesting areas with old churches and grounds.

St Dustan-in-the-East

One thing that you see a lot of in various parts of Europe are ruins or buildings that have been rebuilt because they were destroyed during one of the two World Wars. WWII in particular was bad because there were air strikes that ended up doing a lot of damage. As we were cycling, we passed by this beautiful old ruin of a church. The college still exists, but the area has been turned into a beautiful garden, and one can sit and enjoy the garden scenery. If you could sit there alone, it would be a lovely place for peace and quiet contemplation, but I imagine that many people enjoy sitting there, so I'm not sure if one could ever experience solitude like that there. In any case, we ended up seeing this place only because there ended up being construction on the route we were supposed to take, and we had to take an unexpected detour. I love it when things like that happen because it seems annoying at first to take the detour, but then you realise that it was so worth it. It's when you can believe in that cliché saying about the destination being less or only just as important as the journey.

Postman's Park

A colleague of my husband's recommended a new place for us to check out. We decided to walk there instead of  cycle since we would get a better workout from the hour-long walk to get there rather than cut the time in half with our bikes. It's a very interesting park, also situated on the site of an old church that was damaged in WWII. There were very old gravestones from the 1800s piled up, and some were still standing, but most were so old and untended that the writing had worn away, and we couldn't make out names or dates. It's a tiny green space surrounded by a lot of tall buildings, but parts of the church on the grounds have been rebuilt. But the most interesting aspect of this park is that it has been dedicated to commemorating regular people who died trying to save others. I've taken a few photos to share about who those people were. It's really interesting to see who died and why, in some cases young children trying to save a friend or younger sibling. It's also a little sad to see that, too. You can just imagine how devastating it would be to lose someone, or in some cases, lose both parties when the one couldn't save the other and both died. At the same time, you can appreciate the selflessness of all the people trying to save others, and it's beautiful to reflect on that. The pictures for both this and the section above will indeed look dreadful thanks to Blogger's terrible system for adding photos that I always complain about, but at least you get an idea what the places are like. For the sake of space, I had to decrease the size of the photos below with the various plaques of commemoration, but I believe you can click on them to increase the size so that you can read what they say. In some cases it would have been nice to get closer shots, but there are benches all along, and there were people sitting there, so I didn't want to get too close due to social distancing.

So many horses - and another lockdown

 I've been fairly uninspired to write recently. I haven't been able to go out much. Not only is Britain into its 3rd lockdown, so there isn't much to do anyway, but I managed to somehow injure my ankle, perhaps when I was doing a resistance band workout at home, so I wasn't able to do a whole lot as I needed to really rest it. I got a tenser bandage for it and everything. After about a week, I was starting to feel better, not using the tenser bandage, and decided I was safe to walk again, so my husband and I went out to enjoy the weather, walking for well over an hour, and while I felt fine at the time, by the next day, the had started feeling pain again. So much for getting better. I've been off it for about 2 weeks at this point, and I finally went out for a short walk today, about a third of what I usually do when I went for exercise, and so far I feel fine, but the real test will come tomorrow after the ankle has a chance to stiffen up overnight.

Meanwhile, I thought I would add a tidbit about horses in here. I've learned that horses are often viewed on the street in London--and not just mounted police. The last time I was in London for tourism was 15 years ago, and I can't recall ever seeing horses on the street, even police ones, despite the fact that I spent about a month here and was going out a lot. But I guess if you stick around long enough, you eventually start to see them on the roads. Blogger's interface doesn't allow me to post the video directly, but the horse viewing started shortly after we arrived when we were still in quarantine. I can at least share a link to the video in my Google Photos album. My husband called me over to the window, and we ended up witnessing hundreds of these horse-and-chariot sets racing down the street at a nice pace, I think a canter but some with a high step as if they were in dressage. All the horses appeared to be ponies, though, so they're not dressage type horses, but I was told that the people doing this might be Travellers, who are well-known for having and working with horses a lot. And given the background photo on the page I just looked up to link for readers, I would definitely concur with the suggestion I was given! I had read an ethnography about Travellers in one of my anthropology classes in university many moons ago, but I thought I would add some info for those of you that might not be as familiar with them.

Anyway, aside from the horse guards near Westminster and the mounted police, I've seen what appeared to be children riding with a teacher when I went out for a walk one morning. The person in yellow appears to be a teacher and the rest are quite a bit younger. After sharing this photo with my husband, he informed me that one thing he had learned is that in the UK, even in London, horses are indeed allowed to go on city streets and that traffic even has to yield to them. If you search the web, you'll find numerous laws and by-laws related to horses on the roads. It's quite fascinating! The riders pictured here were on a somewhat quieter street turning onto a busy one, and sure enough, drivers slowed down and allowed them to carry on. They were at least trotting, so it's not like they were going at a slow pace, but even in the wild west where I come from back home, it's not even legal to ride a horse in the city unless it's on personal property, and I think there is only one equine centre there. I just find it all really fascinating. In addition to these folks, yesterday I saw yet a new set of individuals on horses. In this case, they looked like they might be military. From the looks of the horses, they appeared to perhaps be the members that comprise the horse guard (which I'm pictured with above), and perhaps they were taking the horses out for a walk. There are stables in the city, surprisingly, but perhaps there's not that much space for them to get exercise. 

  

The final photo of horses I'll share is the one of the mounted police. You actually see these all over, especially in green spaces as it's convenient to walk around on them, I guess, and you can also guarantee to outrun a perpetrator, should there be one. It also gives you a bit closer to a bird's eye view as well, I would imagine, for keeping an eye our for anything or anyone suspicious. The ones pictured here were walking down the street, perhaps heading back to the stables or who knows.

 

Before leaving this post entirely, I wanted to share a few photos that I forgot to share in my post where I mentioned different things in the grocery store for Christmas. In England, you find Christmas dinner sandwiches. I first came across these way back in 2001, the first time I ever came to England. I was running out of money and had eaten nasty mayonnaise-heavy sandwiches from 7-11 in Madrid because it's all I could afford by that time, and when I returned to London, I was in the cafeteria at my friend's school and thought I'd get a sandwich for lunch. I don't think Spain really has a sandwich culture, so I wasn't really expecting awesome sandwiches there, but I thought for sure I'd see something without mayonnaise here. I was quite mistaken. I did manage to find one sandwich that didn't have mayonnaise, and as I had only been looking at the ingredients list and not the names of the sandwiches, I failed to see that the sandwich was a Christmas turkey sandwich, replete with cranberry sauce and stuffing. Seriously. Spiced cubed bread between two slices of bread? It was as disappointing as the ones in Spain but for other reasons. These days, it seems that they've branched out quite a bit with different Christmas dinner type sandwich options. It might not be hard to to guess that I decided to try none of them. 😆

  

Restrictions 2.0 and life in London

So we're not actually in a lockdown, but as close as you can get without calling it a lockdown. Grocery stores are open, public transportation is still running (such as the Thames Clipper, a ferry service that didn't run during the last lockdown-type month in November), take-out is still an option, and places of worship are open with limitations on the numbers of attendees. But pretty much everything else is shut down again. Christmas Day, you can't meet with anyone outside your own household now, and even outside, where it was the "rule of 6," that has been limited to just meeting a single person outside. I see that food stalls are still open, such as cafes in parks where there aren't chairs for sitting, so people can't congregate there, so we'll probably end up doing that a lot, going for walks or bike rides in parks and then stopping for a coffee outdoors. It's all due to a new strain of the virus that appears to so far be contained in the UK but that is more contagious and spreads faster than the other strains we already have had spreading. So London and parts of Southeast England have gone into a new category of restrictions called tier 4. We're not sure how long it will last, but as before, the virus is unpredictable, which means that for now, it dictates our next steps unpredictably.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share some more about life here. Before I get into that, I should say that I'm happy to provide this little window into life abroad for friends and family at home. I've come to realise that I'm able to help people see the world, even if through just my perspective, but perhaps in a way that allows people to travel through my stories and photos and perhaps forget about the Covid for a while.

Behind the Scenes

The other day, my husband took some clothing items in to get some alterations done. When we went to pick up the order, we were ushered into the back room where they do the actual sewing and pressing because someone was already being helped in the main part of the store, and it's quite small, so there wasn't a way to social distance there. It was just kind of neat seeing the way it all works, this quaint little place with a man in suspenders doing the sale and an Eastern European woman sewing up a storm in the back--she does excellent work, and we were very happy with the quality of the alterations! I figured my mom would love a sewing room like this, sans the computer and files for the business part of the back room. 

Shop Front Fun

One thing I've found entertaining, which is actually something I usually don't like to do, is window shopping. There are different things to see inside stores, and you can sometimes learn a lot about that neighbourhood or the type of society where such a store is thriving. You'll see everything from very local to posh, on a grander scale than at home, if for no other reason than that London is such a big city.

On the local side, I saw what looked to be a drycleaner store. I was standing in line at the post office, which appears to be operated by some Bangladeshi immigrants, and many of the shops surrounding it are either Bangladeshi-owned or at least South Asian. As you can see in the photo, the drycleaning definitely caters to a South Asian population since you can see some very fancy traditional clothing through the window. What surprised me was looking up at what the store purported to offer: IT services! It was hilarious! I'm sure they actually do offer those services, but nowhere does it indicate that they are also a drycleaner, yet you can clearly see in the window that they do offer this service. It just made me laugh because it's so like Indian and Pakistani places that you can find that tend to specialise in everything. Like I've seen in Pakistan a restaurant that specialises in Chinese, Pakistani, Italian, and Lebanese cuisine. At home, there was a Punjabi-owned autobody shop whose slogan read: "Specialising in foreign and domestic vehicles." Are there any other kinds of cars once you've covered the globe? Is that really a specialty when you cover all that territory? It's become a constant source of entertainment for our family--and I have to say that my dad actually did ream out the guy at the autobody shop, in a way that only one Punjabi can to another, to let him know that his slogan made no sense. Surprisingly, the guy did eventually change it! In any case, I love this kind of stuff.

Up close, the pattern of the robe
 has tiny skulls and crossbones 

At the other end of the spectrum are the posh stores you find on Jermyn Street. This is a haven for the true gentleman, and quite possibly the up-and-coming rapper who can afford to look posh but still wants to stick to his "streetwear" look, as evidenced by a mannequin I saw with a lovely tweed coat worn over a half-zip sweater and fleece jogging pants. Or it might even be a wealthy socialite who wants to dress posh and gentlemanly but thinks that putting a skull and crossbones pattern on his bespoke dressing gown (British term for custom-made robe/housecoat) will make him look edgy.  I find the whole notion of these stores offering bespoke loungewear kind of funny, and I wonder if anyone really still wears these. Perhaps they are indeed decreasing in popularity, as we noticed that many stores in this area have closed down permanently due to the pandemic, which perhaps only catalysed their demise. Without the same number of men going to the office, the need for such haute couture business wear (it's not just loungewear, but suits and all the accoutrements at some of the same shops) are on their way out. There are stores that specialise(d) in cuff links, cobbler-made shoes, and grooming products, not just suits and loungewear. Perhaps it's not totally surprising that there is no need to have stores having such focused specialties, as much as perhaps one shouldn't try to specialise in everything. 

What I also find a little interesting is the remnants of colonialism in some of these items. In the photos,

you will see the smoking cap, a Middle- or Near East-style cap with a tassel on it. I was interested in the origins of the hat, and it turns out that the smoking cap began to be used in the Victorian era and was intended to protect the man's hair from absorbing the smell of tobacco. Women would stitch the hats themselves and give as a gift to their husband, the idea being that, especially when worn with a smoking jacket, a man could go off and smoke and return to his lady without the smell of smoke upon him to upset her, according to the social norms of the day. In the one photo, you'll see a set of pyjamas and a robe with Chinese patterns. Both the smoking cap and the robe/PJ combo are remnants of the Victorian society's fascination with other cultures. They would bring designs and patterns into their own society in almost exaggerated ways, in what has been called "orientalist" and "chinoiserie." You'll notice this a lot in art from the era, wallpapers with rich Chinese patterns behind the subject of a portrait or silk and brocade articles of clothing on the person with these ornate patterns. The reason that it is colonial, however, is that this fascination wasn't because the Victorians valued the subject of their fascination but that they exoticised these cultures, viewed them almost as someone would find a freak show fascinating. It was different and new and exotic, and people wanted to partake in it, not learn more about the cultures that created them and feel that they were equals to be cared about or respected. Anyway, that's getting into some sociological analysis, but I do take interest in thinking about and examining even what these clothing styles mean. 

Meanwhile, the streets are decorated beautifully for Christmas, which is a perfect segue into my next topic!

Christmas Grocery Products

I've been interested to see the different kinds of products available in the grocery stores for Christmas. You definitely won't find any eggnog here. Spiced, mulled wine is the popular seasonal beverage, though not at the grocery store, but liqueur- and liquor-based creams seem to be what you find. Some of them I guess are meant for coffee, but with all the types of puddings they have here, which for North Americans, we would think of them as a steamed cake, the creams appear to be used for sauces for those puddings. I generally don't consume alcohol, so I haven't tried any of these, except for a brandy butter I had on a Christmas pudding the other day, and it was definitely a strong brandy flavour. I leave this post with photos of some of the options--and I didn't take a photo of it, but you can get a Bailey's cream, which is perhaps creamier than the Bailey's itself that you can buy in the liquor aisle.

    

A non-lockdown post, about Bath

We finally got to leave town for a little overnight trip. It's still not possible to travel too far--I mean, some places are open to travel, like some of the islands in the Caribbean, for example, but one needs to either self-isolate at some point in the journey or pay a lot of money for a rapid Covid test. So we are staying close to home for now, but at least we are able to get out a little more than last month. We decided to do a short trip to Bath. Many museums are still closed at the moment: the majority of ones in Bath have closed until the spring and summer of 2021, so you can't see everything you want to see there, but there is enough to do to take up a busy full day or a leisurely couple of days. 

I had been to Bath before, which you can read a little about from my blog archives ("The English Countryside") from 2006 when I visited my cousin in Swindon, but this was my husband's first time, and I was just as happy to go back since it's such a beautiful city.

I noted in 2006 that I thought it was a bit of a touristy city, and it is to a point, especially in the city centre where the Abbey and the ancient Roman baths are located, but you can easily walk away from that area and see Bath as a regular city, and it is indeed quite pretty. What I like is that the architecture is distinctly Georgian, which valued symmetry and architecture. According to Wikipedia, it's based on the classical architecture of ancient Greece and Rome--which makes sense, given its Roman history, but it doesn't seem to have the emphasis on columns as much as what you would find in London. Some of the larger buildings have them, but the row houses don't seem to, unlike in London where many of the rowhouse structures have at least one, if not two, pillars on either side of the front door. I also like that Bath is a bit hilly, so you can see layers of the city.

When we arrived at the train station, we walked around a little bit and just looked in the shops. It was raining lightly, and it was only around 7ºC outside, so it was fairly chilly (yes, even for Canadians because of the damp cold), and we came across the Bath Abbey, which was open to the public for viewing--and free!

The Abbey was actually built over some of the ruins of the Roman temple and baths complex--as churches often do to cover up the relics of different forms of worship, I've noticed in various countries. It was built in the 7th Century as a Benedictine monastery and has gone through various re-builds and restorations to become a church, but it seems that the general appearance and structure is the same. There are gravestones all over the floor and sides of the abbey, and I was hoping to find a really old one from that early time period, but over time, the engravings have been worn away by centuries of footsteps walking on them, so the earliest one I could find was from the 17th Century. There is a restoration project underway to revive the old gravestones as much as possible, so it would be interesting to go back after that is complete to see what was done, if I'm still living in the UK by that time.

There was another gravestone from 1704 that I thought was really interesting because it used the Old English spellings with an "s" that looks like an "f." I thought it was perhaps a remnant from German because until a few years ago, German notation used a letter called an "eszett" to indicate what would be the equivalent of 2 s's in English (e.g. the word for street, strasse, was spelled Straße), but apparently that isn't the case. It has more to do with the the difference between capital and lower cases s's in Old English, according to what I read. Anyway, as someone with a linguistics background, these little findings are the kinds of things I love to discover when I travel. The other thing I wanted to point out about the abbey is that it's such a great thing to travel in Europe with a different camera from what I've always had in the past. My camera has a 42x zoom lens on it, so I can actually get close-up shots of the details on the high ceilings of all the abbeys, churches, and cathedrals I visit now. It's wonderful because these are details you can't even see with your naked eye, but I can study them in more detail now than I ever could before.

After the Abbey, we grabbed a bite to eat for lunch at a local pizza place--one of the few places serving a hot lunch that didn't require a reservation and also had enough space for people, and then we headed to the Holburne Museum for the afternoon. We mainly went there for the older paintings housed there, but there was an exhibit of the works of Grayson Perry, who seems to be a very complex and sad individual, based on what I saw of his works at the museum. Because he is a cross-dresser (and, I believe heterosexual), the topic of most of his works has a sexual nature to them as he focuses on exploring mainly his own identity. Much of it is graphic in nature, so I neither photographed those works nor will present them here, but it was interesting to see an artist whose main medium to communicate social commentary is pottery. It's a form that I haven't really seen a lot in my visits to galleries. Most of the rest of the gallery was old portraits from the 1700s or so. There were a couple that were of real interest to me. One of them was a portrait of someone with the last name Pulteney, 1777. The name stuck out because there are shops and streets with this name in Bath, meaning perhaps this was a very influential family, and certainly enough so to afford to commission a portrait of their family member. But also, it was even more significant to me that it was done by a female artist named Angelica Kauffmann--and in all my travels to European galleries, I don't think I have ever seen any female artists from that time period, or at least that used their given name rather than a male pseudonym. That was so fascinating to me. The other picture was one that I found out I could not take a photo of because it was on loan from a private collection, but fortunately, a description and photo of it from the museum exist online, so you can see it here. I was drawn to it as a snapshot in time of what life was like in India in colonial times. 

The hotel lobby

We then went to our hotel, Henrietta House, which was a beautiful building. I think it's a rowhouse converted into a hotel, and it is quite cozy and elegant. All the rooms have chandeliers, and they have updated the rooms to have modern, clean, tiled bathrooms and USB outlets in the walls next to the bed. It was a wonderful place to spend the night, and we were happy to put our backpacks down and spend some time warming up there before going out for supper to a great steak restaurant.

The next day, we were expecting lots of cold and wet weather. All week they had been forecasting snow showers and then sleet showers for London and Bath, but while there was a bit of rain in the early morning, it cleared up, and most of the day was a mix of beautiful sunshine and clouds! That was a really unexpected blessing. We booked tickets at the Roman Baths museum--which normally doesn't require pre-booking, but just for now during the pandemic--and we went through the museum with the little phone devices they have so you can take a guided self-tour. I hadn't paid attention last time I went that it was not only a bath house build around these thermal springs but also a temple complex with a temple devoted to the goddess Sulis Minerva, the water and wisdom goddess. Sulis is the Celtic goddess of healing and sacred waters, and Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom, so you get a sense of how the cultures at that time mixed and created syncretic religious beliefs and practices. There is actually a spa next to the Roman Baths that offers time in the thermal waters as you can't go into the Roman Baths anymore--too old and not maintained for human use, so would be dangerous. But until the pandemic is passed, I don't really want to share water with strangers like that. According to the self-guided tour, the Romans were very vigilant about bathing and cleanliness, and I thought it an interesting pre-cursor to how in England, regular bathing became frowned upon as it was believed to be unhealthy. I remember learning that in English class in grade 10 when we studied Romeo and Juliet because there are characters taking their annual bath at this public bath location. I don't have the time or space to explore the evolution of bathing practices, but it's something I do find interesting.

We grabbed some Cornish pasties for lunch and then walked up to the Circus and Royal Crescent to see those fantastic examples of Georgian architecture. We walked around the area a little bit before heading to the train station to come home. Even though it was sunnier than we expected, it was still cold, and it was also hard to find a bathroom to use since there aren't a lot of public toilets. It may have been a brief trip, but it was quite lovely, and we can't wait to go back when more things are open and enjoy Bath when it's a bit warmer.

The Royal Crescent