London, Day 5

I began the day with the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song in my head. Freddie and I took a train out to the town of Bath. Bath was once a Roman hot-spot for all the well to do Romans, and in Victorian times it experienced a revival from the English. For more history, go here.

We arrived in the late morning. The first thing we did was go on a bus tour so we could figure out what sites we wanted to see. Here are some pictures of what the town looks like.





After the bus tour, we grabbed a bite to eat and then went to Bath Abbey. This is a beautiful old church, not as grand as Westminster but extremely pretty in its own right. We toured the church and the cellars of the old houses that used to be there. The cellars now contain a small museum that shows the history of the church.

These are the original pillars from the Norman Cathedral that stood here before the present church was built in 1499.

From the Abbey we had a short walk to the Roman baths. When the Romans left, the baths fell into ruins until they were rebuilt in Victorian times.

Originally there was a ceiling over the baths but that fell in after the Romans left.

This is a model of what the baths looked like when they were first constructed.

Here I am listening to the audio tour.

Roman coffins

Part of the original Roman pipes

A section of the original ceiling

The baths took a lot longer than we expected and all the shops were closing up as we left. We headed back to the train station for our 90 minute ride back. We ate dinner at an Italian place and now we're back relaxing in the room. Tomorrow we're planning another walking tour. This time we're going into the City section of London. This is where the banking is, plus some of the other major sites to see.

While we've been in London we've seen a lot of small cars including several Smart cars. We've seen these before back in Austin, tiny little cars that make you wonder what you would do with groceries if you had a passenger in the car. But something we had never seen before is the G-Wiz. This car is smaller than the Smart car--I know, hard to imagine. This car is so small Freddie and I have dubbed it the Fart car because you definitely wouldn't want to let one loose in there. It wouldn't have anywhere to go.

Today's gold shoe count was 6, plus 2 gold purses. One girl had a gold purse and shiny silver shoes--why?