More London recap, yay!

I will be back with my thoughts about The Real Thing, but first let's talk about the awesome day trip we took to the countryside. About a week before the trip, Beth was like "You know when we get there I'm going to expect it to look like the 1800's. We need to go to the country."

And thank god we did. I get really overwhelmed in cities and I needed the break from anxiously crossing streets where I didn't know which direction to look, even though every crosswalk has big letters painted on the tar that say LOOK RIGHT or LOOK LEFT. I get flustered crossing streets in American cities, nevermind London where they drive on the other side of the road! I am a country mouse.

Beth booked us on  Evan Evans tour #20 that goes to Bath, Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge. Friday morning we boarded one of those touristy coaches and headed off on the 2.5 hour ride to Bath, the place where Jane Austen lived for a while and wrote some of her books. Beth tells me Jane hated Bath. We loved it.

We ditched the tour of the Roman Baths with the group in favor of finally grabbing some tea and scones in Actual England and roaming by ourselves.

Here is Beth loving Bath:

You can practically see the little cartoon hearts bursting from her head, can't you?

Pop!

Pop! Pop!

Beth Hearts Bath!

Me too. I heart Bath, too.

Beth really wanted to see The Royal Crescent, which- of course- I had never heard of.

Here it is:

It's a bunch of houses built together in an arc.

It was pretty cool looking, I have to say.

Also? This was the place where a bunch of scenes from Persuasion were shot. You know, the one with Rupert-Penry Jones? Who we totally saw and touched the night before at the play? Yeah.

And you know what else is neat? When I took these pictures?

There was someone playing a piano that you could hear wafting from a window.

It was kinda magical.

We then hustled back to meet up with our tour. We couldn't resist stopping to snap some shots on the way even though we were seriously rushing!

Oh, hi there, pretty blue bush!

 >sigh<

Rush, rush, quick snap this, snap that!

We had been warned that the coach would leave without us if we weren't on time!

I think Beth wanted us to get "stranded" in Bath.

Whimper, whimper:

I literally made whimper noises when we scurried past Cath Kidston.

We made it back to the group with only a couple of minutes to spare, seriously.

Visit Beth's Bath post to see a quick video she shot of the crescent, an introduction to our  adorable tour guide Phil who I will talk about in the next post, and the saddest picture of two sad faces that had to leave Bath too quickly.

On to Salisbury Cathedral next!

xo,

melissa