Various adventures + DUBLIN!

If failing to update ones blog in a timely fashion were a punishable offense, Abby and I would both have been served with consecutive life sentences by this point. We do apologize, but the reason for the delay is that we’re out having adventures faster than we’re able to write them down! (Plus there’s that whole silly matter of school.) So there you have my justification for attempting to consolidate a month and a half worth’s of activities and journeys into a readable space… hope you’re sitting comfortably.

I’ll begin around mid-March, a week or two after I returned from Inverness, with my trip to the London Zoo. Having grown up around zoos, I’m definitely a huge fan, so I was really excited to see what London had to offer in the zoo department. I went with a British friend of mine who I met a few years ago on a trip to Honduras; she’s currently living in Northampton, about an hour north of London. To digress for a moment in order to briefly relate another of my March exploits – I later visited her there, and together we visited one of the town’s main attractions, its shoe museum! As most of you reading this blog probably know, I’m an acknowledged shoe maniac, so this was quite a delight for me; here are just a couple highlights:

 

Shoes worn by Elton John in the rock opera "Tommy"!

A fetish shoe with a naked lady standing on the toe. (Not something I'D go for, but hey, it takes all types...)

Anyway, back to the zoo – the admission price was pretty steep, but we had a splendid time. There was lots to see, such as a nocturnal animal exhibit (including the Slow Loris of internet fame), an impressive aquarium, and a family of Galapagos tortoises, the oldest of which was seventy! Still, I thought the coolest part by far was their monkey exhibit. An outdoor path wound through the leafy habitat, with bare branches overhead and wire around its borders, and the monkeys were moving around freely – no glass, no fences; they were scuttling down the path alongside you, crawling through the bushes on either side, and swinging on the branches above, just as bold as you please! (A little too bold, maybe; one of them stole some lady’s chapstick…) Of course, this would only be fun if you think monkeys are adorable, like my friend and I did. I know of a certain someone who would probably deem this experience about as fun as chewing on a cactus. Still, I hope those of you with anti-monkey sentiments can stomach a few pictures, because I thought they were just precious.

Look at hiiiim <3

They congregated en masse when the keeper brought popcorn!

 Later that month, my college groupmates and I traveled to St. Ives, a delightful coastal town in Cornwall, one of England’s southwestern provinces. With its sweet, kitschy little souvenir stores, its plethora of candy shops, and its overall touristy-yet-charming character, it had much the same ambience as many of Oregon’s seaside towns. We were lucky enough to get sun that weekend, which, in combination with the soft, sandy beach and the brilliantly blue sea, made us all a little giddy with happiness. The seafood there was fantastic – I had whitebait for the first time, as well as some of the best fish and chips of my life. The Tate Museum of Modern Art also has a gallery in St. Ives, founded because many painters throughout the years have been drawn to the city by its exceptional quality of light, although the exhibition we saw there was by no means as traditional as what you might be imagining. It was called “Since 1982” by Simon Fujiwara; look it up if you’re in the mood for some seriously modern art. Speaking of, we also saw the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Gallery while we were there – she was a famous twentieth century sculptor who lived in St. Ives for a time, and after her death, her house was turned into a museum of her work (as per her wishes). I’m always into learning more about groundbreaking and independent women artists, even though not all of her sculptures did it for me; plus she had a lot of cool things to say about her creative process.

Me with one of the sculptures

"I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism." - Barbara Hepworth

What better way to wrap up a weekend at the coast than with ice cream?

And now, friends, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Saint Patrick’s Day 2012: Dublin. …Also Balbriggan, a very small town about an hour north of Dublin, which is where Abby and I stayed for the sake of cost-effectiveness (all the reasonably priced hostels in Dublin had been sold out for months). I met her there on Friday morning, and we started out by visiting the nearby Ardgillan Castle. To be fair, “castle” is a bit of a misnomer, though it does stand on the site of an 18^th century castle; but today it more closely resembles an estate house, situated in the middle of a sprawling, beautiful plot of land next to the sea. It has a long and storied past, which we learned from our very kind tour guide, who led Abby and I through each room of the house (it was just us there, which was quite cool; we felt like VIPs getting a private tour!). He taught us lots of interesting tidbits about the history of Ireland, the family who owned the house for many generations, and the beautiful period furnishings on display – he even let me play a “Jane Austen”-era piano, which basically thrilled me to the core! (He even said he thought I was “quite good,” teehee.) He also explained to us why so often in nineteenth century portraits of children you find it hard to tell whether the child is a boy or a girl…

Well, really they just all look like girls... for example, this is "Hilda und Franzi Matsch," by Franz Matsch, 1901. Believe it or not, the blonde on the right is a boy. Not one of the paintings on exhibition at Ardgillan, but they're of a similar nature.

The reason for this is that any time a new child was born to a family with a lot of wealth or land, their more distant relations – who stood to inherit the fortune if the family should fail to produce a more immediate male heir – were of course anxious to know its gender. The more devious of these relatives, if they were to learn that the child was indeed male, might be tempted to harm him in order to keep themselves first in line for the inheritance. So, when people clamored for a portrait to be created of the new arrival, the family would dress the child in girl’s clothes regardless of its actual sex, and would continue doing so until he was old enough to watch out for himself. Quite interesting, no?

That night we supped bemusedly at an American-style rock ‘n’ roll diner, went out for a few drinks, and hit the hay in time to get plenty of rest before our early start the next morning, when we took the bus into Dublin for a day of revelry in the name of St. Patrick! We began by staking out a spot from which to watch the parade, taking time along the way to get a little festive facepaint.

Skillfully painted by some very cool art students

Just a small sample of the parade, which was great fun

After the parade and a spot of lunch (during which I was introduced to Irish soda bread and promptly fell in love with it), we went to Dublin Castle. “Castle” is again a bit of a misnomer here; it’s more aptly described as a set of stately buildings surrounding a courtyard, though again, it stands on the site of a medieval Norman castle, established by King John of England in 1204. Before that, it was a Gaelic ring fort, part of the Viking settlement called Dyflin that provided Dublin’s foundations; the city’s name derives from Dubhlinn harbor – Gaelic for “Black Pool.” Most of the surviving architecture is from the eighteenth century, but remains of the original Viking fort are still visible down underneath the courtyard (Abby and I, as a couple of ladies with Viking roots, thought this was way cool!).

Some of the fort's remains, including the moat

Inside the building, things looked much more palatial. The castle functioned as the seat of English rule in Ireland until the nation became a republic on January 16^th, 1922 – another cool item on display was the document signed by Michael Collins that declared Ireland an independent nation. From 1684 until that time, though, it served as a palace for the English viceroy, so its interior is accordingly grand and ornate.

Today, the castle is used to house the State Apartments and various government offices. (Don't know how this picture got so yellow...)

Our tour guide also taught us the reason why Ireland is associated with shamrocks and the color green – St. Patrick supposedly used the shamrock to teach the Irish about the trinity – as well as the reason why one of its prominent national symbols is the harp: one of its earliest kings used to soothe his armies before they went into battle by playing the harp for them. (“Hey guys, you’re probably about to die, but isn’t this harp music sooo nice and mellow…?”) After the tour, we briefly took in Dublin Gardens, a beautiful park next door to the castle where the flowers were just beginning to bloom. Then our next stop was St. Patrick’s Cathedral – it seemed only appropriate. We tried to line up our visit with the Mass so we wouldn’t have to pay to see the inside, but it didn’t quite work out, so we contented ourselves with the outside.

Us at Dublin Gardens

St. Patrick's cathedral

Then we decided the time had come to honor the St. Paddy’s tradition and hit the bars early! We were in and out of lots of neat pubs, including the oldest one in Dublin, and even though neither of us are big fans of dark beer, we shared a half-pint of Guinness in the spirit of the day (it definitely tasted better than Guinness in the United States). It so happened that someone had had the bright idea to schedule an England vs. Ireland rugby match that night, so the scene was pretty rowdy for the first few hours, but things calmed down a bit after the game (poor Ireland lost)… only to pick up again as people began to hit the point of drunkenness where one loses, among other things, ones volume control. Here is where the story gets a little fuzzy, not to mention somewhat not-internet-friendly. Chances are, if you’re reading this, Abby or I know you well enough to be comfortable telling you about it in some less public setting. Suffice it to say, it was the craziest night of both our lives.

So with that we skip forward to the next morning, which miraculously found Abby and I back in our hotel in Balbriggan. We took the afternoon to explore our little village a bit more; the weather was blissfully nice, so we strolled along the beach for a while and enjoyed the sunshine. While we were there, we were also chatted up by a local man who asked if we’d seen any leprechauns on our trip so far, and, when we told him we hadn’t, suggested that we could find one in his bedroom. Points for creativity, at least.

The beautiful beach!

 Then we returned to Dublin, where we saw Trinity College, walked around St. Stephen’s Green (a gorgeous park in the north of the city), and had a delicious dinner at the pub before boarding our ferry home! (This part of the journey was slightly terrible due to a long layover between the arrival of our ferry at Holyhead and the next train to London, and involved us standing around in the bathroom hitting the hand dryers repeatedly in order to stay warm, but we’re troopers; we dealt with it.)

Swans at St. Stephen's Green

I’ve had a few other wonderful London adventures since that most marvelous weekend, but soon after my return, I found to my dismay that the end of the term and the boatloads of work that accompany it was drawing near, so my free time took a bit of a dive. I’ve finished it all now, though, and am currently traveling through Europe for a few weeks before my inevitable return to the States on May 4^th. Regardless, though, I fear this post has already grown massive… so I’ll let Abby cover our recent sojourn to Lyme Park, and I’ll return soon (read: soon-ish, possibly not soon at all) with an account of my continental travels. Here’s a preview: everything so far has been AMAZING.

Ta ta for now, my loves!

Spring break in the Scottish Highlands

This is Zoe again, with a report on my recent midterm break in Inverness, Scotland!

My traveling companions and I arrived at our hostel on Saturday night after a long train ride from London. We went out for drinks and some traditional Scottish food at a nearby pub - I got smoked haddock, and one of my friends was brave enough to try haggis - and we were pleasantly surprised when, shortly after we'd arrived, a band started playing American blues tunes (Eric Clapton and the like)! We stuck around a while, and soon we started talking to the two middle-aged couples sitting next to us; only two of them were natives to Inverness, but all of them were Scottish. They were really kind, and in addition to giving us lots of tips about what there was to see in the area and how to order/properly drink scotch, they also bought us multiple rounds of beer (or, if you're me and don't like beer, cider)! A few dances and lots of laughs later, we stumbled back to the hostel and went to bed.

Sunday we were a little groggy, so we got off to a bit of a slow start, but eventually we went outside to explore the town. It's rather small and blessedly walkable, with a river (the River Ness) running through it, several lovely churches, and lots of pubs; it's also within easy bussing distance of many of the highlands' notable landmarks. It's a really wonderful place, I'd recommend it to anyone! Anyway, our first stop was Inverness Castle - which is not an ancient castle, it only dates from 1836 and it's used today as the town courthouse... but it was still very lovely, and it's up on a hill which provides a fantastic view of the town.

I didn't take this picture, it's from wikipedia, but the only shot I got of the whole castle was really blurry and awful; I thought this represented it better...

I did take this one, though, as well as the rest of the photos you see here :)

Then we headed south along the river till we got some little islands - they were laid out just like small-scale public parks, but somehow they were made twice as charming by virtue of being on the water.

The islands from the bank

The three guys I was traveling with; they were a lot of fun :)

We noticed there were Christmas lights strung above the paths, and so made it a goal to return at night in the hopes they'd be lit up. (Oho, but were they?! Stay tuned for the answer!) We went out again that night with some cool Canadian folks we'd met at the hostel, saw some more music, and tossed back more than a few drinks...

... Resulting in another late start on Monday. :P Oh well; we were just trying to honor the Scottish drinking tradition! That afternoon we walked through the town graveyard, in which stood another tall hill. We climbed it, and found several rows of very old graves on the top (the earliest I saw was from around 1810). With big, dramatic clouds rolling by overhead and more striking views of the city, there was quite a gravity to the scene, and I stayed for an hour or so, feeling very serene. I didn't take any pictures; it just wouldn't have felt right.

On Tuesday morning (hangover-free) we decided to go to the Black Isle, a peninsula very close to Inverness where, the people at the hostel had told us, there were hiking opportunities just about everywhere you looked. Sadly, there turned out to be a bit a discrepancy between the kind of hiking we had in mind and the kind of hiking the people who'd given us our information had in mind... we got off the bus expecting to see a trailhead of some kind, but all we saw were a few houses, fields and trees to the right, and the beach to the left. So we followed the beach for some time, then moved to the road which ran alongside it, all the while looking for trails, to no avail (plus we got derailed by a snail; the whole thing was quite a fail... I could keep going, but I won't). After walking aimlessly for at least a couple of miles, we began to feel lost, so I asked a random driver for help locating a bus stop, and he told us to keep going up the road till we reached Cromarty. Two more miles found us within sight of Cromarty, and we stopped to chat with a man walking his dog along the beach, only to find that he was the curator of the town museum; he told us a bit about it, including that it was a Georgian town (meaning it dates from the Georgian era), all the buildings were painted white, and that we could indeed catch a bus back to town from there. He also told us that the fields and woodlands we'd seen as we were walking, though they were privately owned, were open to the public, so they would've been fair game for hiking; we figured this is what the people we'd spoken to at the hostel had meant by "hiking opportunities." Slightly annoyed by the realization that we could've been hiking the whole time we'd been trudging along the road, we finally arrived at Cromarty, where we hung around another cemetery while waiting for the bus. There was, however, a cool, decrepit church there, built in 1783; the roof had caved in, and the inner courtyard was full of trees and vines and fallen bricks. It had a kind of beauty to it, and it almost made the whole ordeal worth while.

In wake of the slight letdown brought by Tuesday, Wednesday was SPECTACULAR! We bussed it to Loch Ness, where we did some actual hiking, starting with an old logger's trail that led into the surrounding hillside.

Got some terrific views

♪ Into the wooooods! ♪

The beautiful countryside from the top of a viewpoint

We also visited Urquhart Castle, a 13th-century fortress on the shores of Loch Ness.

From above the castle...

... and from atop one of its battlements! It's a bit ruinous now, as you can see, but imposing nonetheless

Me, obscuring a really spectacular view of the loch :P

After that, we hopped on a bus back home, but as we were passing the loch, I spied something outside my window...

Could it be?... Nawww...

We stayed close to Inverness again on Thursday, strolling around a local nature reserve (and walking through the projects to get to it!) and then later having a few drinks to celebrate our last night in town. That night, we returned to the islands on the River Ness to see how they looked with all the Christmas lights turned on... maybe it was partially due to the alcohol, but the effect was beyond magical. It was like a little multicolored fairyland. I only wish my camera could've done it any semblance of justice, but here's just one picture:

The blur is definitely not some intentional artistic choice; it just looked awful with the flash on...

It was a wonderful way to end our visit. :) Then, after a rather long train journey on Friday, I went by myself to Aberystwyth, Wales, where a high school buddy of mine is studying abroad this semester! It's another very small town, right on the coast, and it had a whole lot of charm.

It was really neat to get so close to the Atlantic Ocean, having only ever seen the Pacific!

Aberystwyth had a 13th-century castle of its own; that's behind me, on the far left is the Old College, and between them is the local church my friend attends

I'm back in London now, attending classes again (reluctantly), but as I mentioned, Abby's spring break begins next week, and then the weekend after that, the two of us are headed to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day! We're BEYOND excited; it promises to be a blast. So check in soon, folks! Lots of love to all of you!

Get ready for a long one... Glasgow/Edinburgh, the Tower of London, and Parliament!

So, as Abby mentioned, I also took a trip to Bath and Stonehenge, but I've been up to LOTS of other antics since then, so I think I'll focus my attention on those other activities, since she covered Bath and Stonehenge so brilliantly. :) (The only thing I did differently than her is that I also went to a mineral spa fed by the hot springs which created the Roman Baths, which was SO good!)

The weekend before that, my group went to Scotland; we spent Friday and Saturday nights in Glasgow, and on Sunday we travelled to Edinburgh. There are two faculty members at the institution where we take classes who are from Glasgow, and they met with us before we left to tell us some things about the city. One of them said that, despite its rough reputation, the people there are incredibly friendly - "obnoxiously friendly," in fact, was I believe her choice of words; she told us chances were good that we'd sit down at a bus stop, and the old woman next to us would turn to us unprovoked and tell us her life story. Which, funnily, was EXACTLY what happened to my travel buddy and I when we reached Glasgow! We had a good talk with said old lady while on the bus, then arrived at our hostel, where we rendez-vous'd with our college tripmates and bunkered down for the night.

The next day, we went on a walking tour of the city, which was made only slightly less enjoyable by the weather gods' decision to bombard us with (blessedly brief) intervals of snow and hail. My favorite part was seeing the Glasgow School of Art, both inside and out: the building was designed by Glaswegian architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and though it dates from the turn of the nineteenth century, it is so innovative and unique that one would guess it was built some time in the last twenty years. I wish pictures had been allowed on the inside, but it was incredible; every room, every stairwell was different, with some that felt like an M. C. Escher painting come to life and others that were reminiscent of a thatched wood Japanese home. The library was the best part, having been designed by Mackintosh to look like a clearing in the woods, an image richly evoked by the dark wood paneling, the light filtering through tall windows, and the densely-spaced pillars which stood around the room. We later had a delicious high tea at the Willow Tea Rooms, another commission of Mackintosh's; the chairs he originally had installed there, also designed by him, had such tall backs that the ladies who sat in them would often topple over backwards! Who can say whether this was a mistake, or a practical joke by a man who, unlike many of these high class tea-taking ladies, had secured his own fortune through hard work...

Front facade of the Glasgow School of Art

After tea, we went to see a play called The Infamous Brothers Davenport at the Citizen's Theatre, which I quite enjoyed; it was based on accounts from the occult-obsessed Victorian Era of a pair of American brothers who made their fortunes touring the world and staging public seances. There were plenty of cool stage effects and magic tricks, and the story was very interesting, too! Then, after the show, all of us headed out to a pub where they were playing live music - a mix of Scottish traditional fare and newer popular tunes - and proceeded to get fairly drunk with bunches of rowdy Scotsmen, resulting in a crazy dance party. It was definitely a night to remember.

The next day we travelled to Edinburgh, which was also wonderful, though it felt a bit more touristy than Glasgow. It was, however, unbelievably gorgeous; the highlight of the day for me was when we climbed to the rooftop terrace of The National Museum of Scotland, which gave us fantastic views of the city in all directions (plus the weather gods had decided to mellow out, so it was sunny as can be). Another neat part of the visit was seeing The Elephant Cafe, where J.K. Rowling first began writing Harry Potter! Sadly, I wasn't feeling terribly well, so I returned to London pretty shortly after arriving there. Abby will in Edinburgh for her upcoming spring break, though, so don't fret, all you anxious readers will hear more about the city soon. :)

The National Museum of Scotland's rooftop terrace

Views of the city - the tall spire on the left is an awesome monument to Sir Walter Scott

Edinburgh Castle!

WHAT WHAT?!

Then, a couple weeks later, my group saw both the Tower of London and took a tour of the Houses of Parliament in one spectacular day. The first thing one does at the Tower of London is, of course, to go see the Crown Jewels, which I did - they were breathtaking, I've never seen anything sparkle so intensely! There were lots of other royal treasures, too; sadly, photography wasn't allowed... but there was plenty more to see. I took a tour from one of the Beefeaters, the official guardsmen of the tower; he was a lot of fun, and very knowledgable. There was also ample signage on the history of the many buildings and such, and the different uses they've been put to through time. Here's just some of what I learned:

The outer wall in the foreground, the Wakefield Tower (I think?) on the left, and the White Tower on the right

The White Tower in full

A memorial to several of the innocent lives that have been brought to an end at the Tower

Traitor's Gate, through which such famous prisoners as Ann Boelyn were brought into the tower

The courtyard and the inner wall

One of the tower's seven resident ravens. They've been under official protection by the tower for centuries; there's a legend that if anything should ever happen to them, bad fortune will befall London!

My favorite part of my visit - inside Beauchamp Tower, where prisoners were kept. The walls were covered with the final marks they were to leave upon the world; some were beautiful engravings, some were bitter epithets, and some were words of wisdom. 

Then, we were off to Parliament!

Interesting side note - they have you walk through a security scanner when you enter, and when I went through with my bag, they stopped me and confiscated my rape whistle... still not quite sure why; maybe they wanted to guarantee I wouldn't blow it just to make a scene? Anyway, we got the tour from a really delightful old Scottish man named Eddie (he got a phonecall from his wife halfway through). We got to see several of the more famous rooms, including the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and learned lots of neat things about the history of the building and the symbolism of some of the art. We also learned that two everyday phrases originated with Parliamentary customs:

1.) "It's in the bag" - there's an actual big, velvet bag in the House of Commons where public petitions are placed, and so when the question is raised of whether there are any matters of public interest to be considered, the reply is "It's in the bag."

2.) "Toe the line" - running parallel to each of the front rows of benches in the House of Commons is a red line, which those seated at the front are not allowed to cross. You can see it here (picture courtesy of the internet; there were no pictures allowed inside, sadly):

There's exactly a sword and a half length's distance between the lines; they were originally painted there to prevent angry MPs on the front benches from running one other through during debate! Thus, to "toe the line" is to respect the "no crossing" rule.

Once the tour was finished and I'd reclaimed my whistle, we were officially on SPRING BREAK!! I had plans to travel to the Scottish highlands for the week with three of the boys in my group, but we weren't departing till the next morning. I have lots of good stories about our trip, but this post is already so crowded, I think it's best to save it for another night, but I promise I won't let so much time go by without writing an update again... (Though I'm sure you're all surviving somehow.)

Until next time, then!

Bath and Stonehenge --Abby's Experience

Sadly Zoe and I were not able to go to Bath and Stonehenge together, but we were lucky enough to both go in the same week! I went on a Sunday, and the following is my experience of these famous locations. Be forewarned that I will most certainly and hopelessly stray into the poetical and metaphysical realm of description.

The English countryside is exactly as you would imagine it to be from books, paintings, movies, and fairy tales. The early-morning sun positively glistened off the ponds, brooks, and rivers. Hedged fields of green grass were often speckled with fluffy white sheep. On a long, dirt road that stretched up into the distance an old man with a cane made his way slowly up to a small house silhouetted alongside wild oak and birch trees. I never fully understood the phrase "rolling hills" until I took this trip; the landscape looked like the sea might in a storm with great swells of waves tumbling into one another. And at the crest of a particularly tall and circular mound of earth sat Stonehenge.

The first thing that struck me about it, admittedly, was how small it was. But that thought quickly faded as I did a 360 view of the land surrounding it. I couldn't have appreciated it in theory, you can't really ask the question until you are there: how on earth did they get those massive stones there? It is literally right smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps what is most fascinating is how little we know about it. It might be a monument to a sun-god, as it seems to have been built in order to reflect the rising and setting of the sun. Then again its multi-circular construction might have made it a part of a more complicated astrological calendar. Question after question flooded my head about the kind of people who would have built, seen, lived around, and celebrated this structure. According to one of my friends on the trip all of the buildings we hold so dear in our modern society and praise as pinnacles of technological achievement would crumble in a thousand years' time if the human race was wiped out. The chemicals we use to build would cause the structures to disintegrate, but what would still be standing would be Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and the Mayan Temple. In other words, all those structures created from the simplest and purest parts of the earth. To have stood so close to something that was so old and so shrouded in mystery was awe-inspiring. The human race is so small, and time is a funny thing.

Back on the bus and on our way to Bath we began to see cottages that looked as though they were hundreds of years old, and castles and mansions that were most certainly hundreds of years old. Most of them were laden with ivy and surrounded by grounds that, had it been spring, would have held bountiful gardens. We stopped outside of Bath Abbey, a breathtaking monastery built in the seventh century. Over the years it has fallen into and out of states of disrepair, and each century has left its mark in some way when restoring it through ornate decoration. We visited the Royal Crescent, the Circus, and the modern spa that uses the hot-spring in its treatments, but the real money was in the thing that gives the city its name; the Roman Baths.

10,000-odd years ago a great deal of rain fell in the area of Bath. It seeped down into the limestone below and was later pushed back up through the cracks. When it emerged into the open air it was hot, bubbling, and full of minerals. The Romans found it and though that it must be the home of their goddess Minerva, and so they built a temple for her around it. Over the two thousand years since then, people have come to bathe and heal in the same place. Ironically if you tried to take a bath in the temple's water now you'd get very sick, but it's a nice thought and prompted yet another series of reflections in my head about human history and time.

A lot of Bath's charm also comes from the beautiful architecture constructed during the Georgian period. Modern day clothes and cars seem out of place in the cobblestone streets and beside the magnificent buildings. It is at once full of history and in the same instant timeless. It has the quirks and personability of a beach town without the tackiness. It's a well preserved and majestic monument without the sterilization. It's Italy in England. Another thing that struck me about it was the respect for spirituality and mysticism. Despite the many influences of vastly differing religions (roman mythology, Catholicism, etc...), I found no feeling of hostility between those religions. Rather it seemed more open and accepting, as a place of healing should be.

Whatever walk of spirituality or philosophy one might claim, Bath remains steeped in human life, and there is something "greater-than" about that too. You can almost feel a deep vibration of all of those lives connecting and leading you to that moment, as though every footstep on the millennia-old streets were accounted for and now supported yours. It felt painful to leave so suddenly, I felt as though I could have lived there forever. As we drove away from the extraordinary city a deep red sunset emerged from the could cover and pierced the sky along the horizon. It was a perfect ending to such a meaningful experience.