The GCW Tour, A Few Bits of the UK and Ireland: Bed, Bath and Beyond.

We've spent the last two days at the Aquae Sulis Guest House in Bath. As long as you can stand throw pillows, I can highly recommend it. Quite lovely, relatively inexpensive (comparatively speaking), and an included breakfast that actually requires someone to cook. But I am mystified as to what do with all the throw pillows on my bed.

Anyway, here's another fast pass to once again get caught up...

We took a morning train from London to Bath. The ride takes about two hours, but the train has wifi, so we used the time to come up with our plan for Bath. Reading that Stonehenge requires advance tickets, the biggest question was whether we pick up the car and immediately head out or wait and go in the morning. 

The boys chose the morning, which turned out to be a really good call.

We arrived in Bath at about noon, and, since was tired of sitting, we walked the mile to the Hertz rental car place. There I learned that Hertz frequently rents theoretical cars, in that the lot had no cars but actual cars but had six customers who had all rented cars online that the website said were there. Eventually we landed on the clerk deciding that while she was not confident a car would arrive by the end of the day that could, in turn, be rented to me, she was optimistic this would be the case. She agreed to call me at 5:00 to let me know, regardless.

And since the Hertz dealer was down this weird blind alley, my Uber app was telling me it needed to upgrade before it could work, and I was annoyed, we walked to the hotel. The hotel, at least, was a happy surprise.

So now we had a few hours to kill, so we walked back to the city centre along the very nice Bristol to Bath Railway Trail, which meanders along the Avon river, like so...

The trail eventually leads to the city centre, where we cut off to check out the Royal Crescent, and Edwards era set of houses...

We skipped the Jane Austen Centre, since I think the Nephew the Younger would've preferred to be tarred and feathered to being forced to go in...

Eventually we made it to the Abbey. This was quite lovely in that a) it's quite lovely, b) they do a brief hourly(?) prayer, with everyone invited to join or contemplate silently, and the hourly prayer while we where there was "a prayer for the dying," which I thought quite friendly of them, and c) while we were in the Abbey, but, thankfully, not during the prayer, Hertz called to tell me they'd have a car for me at 5:30...

So now we headed to the Roman Baths, which were the basis on which the city was formed. I left the boys with their audioguides to walk the exhibits and check it all out...

...while I hiked back to deal with the car.

Now before I move on with the story, a question: I get the fascination with these audioguides, which we're seeing everywhere either included with the entry fee or as an add on -- they cover all languages, save wages on guides, etc. -- but how mentally deficient do you have to be to not be able to figure out that putting the little number that tells people to start the next entry just inside the door is a terrible, terrible idea. Everyone steps into the doorway, sees the number, stops, keys in the number, starts listening, and only when you come up and shove them from behind do they realize they're blocking traffic and get out of the way. Horrible little devices, audioguides. 

Anyway, you'll have to ask the boys about the baths, as I never really saw them, but I can say the boys definitely took the two pictures I would've taken, so it was like I was there...

On our way to the baths, we noticed the advertisement for the Bizarre Bath evening walk...

...so we made plans to go. It's a little unusual for what it is -- as the guide noted at the beginning, "this walk is not educational -- well, except that the kids might learn some new words" -- but it was pretty fun. It's mostly elaborately constructed jokes, with some magic thrown in for good measure, but for the hour-and-a-half or so it takes, it's $10 ($7 for students, and "$17 for seniors, since they're only going to slow us down") well spent. 

In the morning we headed out to Stonehenge. I was going to address that here, but a) this post has gotten long, b) I'm tired, and c) it's going to require addressing the topic of driving in England, so I'll wait and do that tomorrow.