If It's Thursday,

If it's Thursday, this must be Bath. We learned our lesson, travel-wise, and took the train this time. Soooooo much faster and more pleasant.

We hopped on the hop-on, hop-off bus - love these tours! - to get an overview of the city and decide what we wanted to see in our limited time here.

More locks and canals in the middle of Bath.

Interesting tidbit from the tour - see that black box with the window on the back of the center building? That's an outhouse. Once we knew what they were, we saw them all over Bath.

Bath Abbey was second on our must-see list, but it was right outside the bus door when our tour ends, so it became our first stop.

Glorious!

This area has been used for religious purposes - both pagan and Christian - since about 60 A.D.

The interior was stunning.

I loved the soaring ceilings,

stained glass windows,

and the amazing pipe organ.

Even the seats had intricately carved designs. See the falcon (griffin?) and the dragon? Such beautiful workmanship.

Top on our must-see list was the Roman Baths, which - conveniently for us - are right next door to the Abbey.

These were begun by the Romans, building on top of a natural hot spring, and added to over the centuries by other cultures. It's truly amazing what they've been able to excavate.

And they are still uncovering rooms and artifacts today.

See the guy in the yellow vest about halfway down this picture? He was marking and photographing a new find right next to the tourist path.

Our favorite artifact was the Beau Street Hoard, 8 bags of coins totaling 17,500 pieces, found in 2007 near the Baths. Some of the coins are on exhibit; they believe several people stashed the coins over several centuries. Wonderful to see some coins as they were found - dirty and lumped together - while others were clean and sparkling.

We also toured Number One The Royal Crescent, a town house completed in 1776 and decorated as it would have been in that time period. A docent in each room explained the furnishings and brick-a-brack, and put them in context with the room's occupant. Very interesting.

From the bus we saw the Circus,

and the Royal Crescent - building began here in 1734 -

but we didn't have time to investigate them further. Something for us to do on our next visit!

 

Down Day

Hiking around Blenheim yesterday was a bit hard on the legs, so we took today off from sightseeing. Instead, the boys visited a furniture making shop, including a 45-minute tour of the factory, and had a pub lunch. We girls hit all the charity shops - aka thrift stores - within walking distance.

Sparkly!! Looks much better IRL. £1.50 ($2.40)

 

I found a scarf/shawl for £2 (about $3.20) that I love; hopefully I can get a decent picture of it tomorrow.

Purple enamel necklace, £.95 (about $1.52)

 

And I went a bit crazy buying costume jewelry. I love buying pretty sparkly things, but I seldom remember to actually wear them. I really need to work on that.

A brooch with small stones and a bracelet with glass beads and real pearls. £1.50 each

All told, I spent less than $12 for a morning of fun and some sparky memories. Worth every penny pence.

 

Blenheim Palace

Our trip is turning into a tour of the great houses of the U.K. - and I'm super ok with that. Today we'd hoped to see both Oxford and Blenheim Palace. But when our bus from Newbury was late and it took us over 3 hours to travel the 35 miles to Oxford (from the time we walked out of our apartment), I knew Plan A was doomed.

Hubby and I both agreed that Plan B was Blenheim Palace. We took the local bus from Oxford, then hiked the 1/2 mile or so up the long drive to the house.

The palace grounds are huge! One of the guides told us that during tours, the current Duke stays in a farmhouse 5 miles away - and it is still on the estate.

If you click on the picture, you can zoom in and see more details. It's worth it!

I really wish we'd had time to walk the grounds. Capability Brown, the same man that did the landscape work at Highclere Castle, designed the grounds here. We caught glimpses of the formal Italian gardens during one of the tours; needless to say they are gorgeous.

Lunch in the Orangery was our first stop. So beautiful!

Our first tour was the private apartments used by the family. Our excellent guide was accompanied by the under-butler (not kidding) who talked about the table settings in the family dining room - Faberge salt grinders, anyone?? - and the etiquette of meal service. He also had the key that allowed us into the family drawing room - complete with carpet worth 2-3 million pounds; Faberge decorations; and priceless paintings. Gorgeously overwhelming.

We had time before our second tour to check out the Winston Churchill exhibit. Churchill was born at Blenheim and proposed to his wife here. The exhibit was a nice blend of Churchill the man and Churchill the Prime Minister.

I wish I could put pictures of the state apartments in here. There were three opulent State Rooms (lords and ladies went to the left; royalty to the right); tapestries commissioned in the 1700's to depict battles won by the first Duke of Marlborough; 10,000 books in the library; and a magnificent floor-to-towering-ceiling Willis organ.

The current Duke's car is parked toward the center of the photo; we saw him as he was driving out. I guess when you own the place, you can park anywhere you want.

I really (really, really) wish we could have spent more time here. I'd have taken all the tours, then turned around and done them again. I loved seeing Highclere yesterday, but I love Blenheim even more.

 

Highclere

My number one goal for this trip, from the time we began planning, was to visit Highclere Castle, aka Downton Abbey.

You can imagine my disappointment when their website said Highclere would be open only 3 days during our trip,

and all entry tickets for those days were sold out.

So we made other plans.

Last night we bought train tickets to Bath, leaving at 9:30 this morning.

Then Terry's sister-in-law said she'd heard the estate sometimes held back tickets for walk-in visitors, and if we got there early enough we might be able to score some of those.

Back to the train station we went for a refund on our Bath tickets. SIL, who in 6 years of living in Newbury has never visited Highclere, drove us to the estate where, miracle of miracles, we got entry tickets!

Front doorway.

No photos were allowed of the interior (which is just as overwhelming and beautiful as you think it is), so we had to content ourselves with outdoor shots.

We walked through the grounds,

including the walled garden

with its shrub tunnel and multiple greenhouses.

One of my favorite things were the enormous trees around the house.

They were amazing.

Some have probably been here since the original house was founded in the 1600's.

Can you imagine how big this tree was before it came down?

The icing on the Highclere cake for the boys was the collection of vintage Morgan motor cars in the parking lot as we were leaving.

They looked so perfectly appropriate in that setting.

A few more pics . . .