Day #13
Breakfast
We woke up and went down to the Dining Room for breakfast. It was a nice affair and we had the usual bacon+sausages+eggs+baked beans+tomato (it is just starting to get a little boring now).
Amy decided to indulge and get some Black Pudding as well. She shared it with me and what surprise, it is really bland!!! (I would have never thought that from British food ;). One thing about British food, they provide copious amounts of Vinegar and Worchester Sauce and load the food with salt. If you ever want to know what British food tastes like, grab yourself a slice of bread, sprinkle salt on it, put HP sauce on it and then eat it. TADA! British food.
Jane Austen Centre
We walked from our room down to Central Bath (like I said earlier, you can walk around Bath easily - we did it this time - We also saw a loveable pussy cat who lapped up all the attention - cats are the same the world over)
Amy had left most of her breakfast so we stopped at a Thai Restaurant where she should ordered food (I was full so I just had drinks) Amy was wrapped that she was finally eating some food with flavour ;). After this we went to the Jane Austen Centre. What a disappointment! When we got there it was closed. The lady there gave Amy a brochure as a consolation prize. I could only see the back of Amy's head, so I had an immediate flashback to the "Hahn Ice" ad.
We were determined to do something this day, so we walked around town looking for a taxi rank. There is only 1 in bath (that I have seen) at the train station.
Sham Castle
We got a taxi to take us to Sham Castle. I joked to the driver that we wanted to see a real castle not a sham castle, and he replied that this WAS a sham castle. He explained that it was just a wall. We asked him to take us there anyway, but to leave the meter running so we could get a lift back. When we got there Amy got out and spent about 5 minutes looking at it. He was right, it was just a wall (and not a very big one). It would have struggled to keep an old lady out. The driver told us that it was built by a rich person in Bath to have something to look at from their house (several miles away). He had money to burn. He was quite critical of Bath (he was a local too) and said that this town had a history of facades (he said that the royal crescent had a very pretty front side, but was ugly behind that). Amy who was now doubly-disappointed asked if he could take us to Prior Park (a stately manor) for us to look at. We got there, and we were in luck - it was open.
Prior Park
We paid the driver and then he left. Disappointment #3: The stately manor was a private boarding school and we were not allowed in. The tour we paid for allowed us to walk around the botanical gardens (I think I am sick of botanical gardens now) but we found this out too late. We walked through the forest seeing all the usual things but the one standout was a giant stone bridge that crossed the lake. Finally we exited the park and started walking toward the town centre (I have a good sense of direction and can usually find these things easily).
Leaving Bath
We got to the town centre and got a taxi to take us to Wentworth house where we picked up our bags and then headed back to the town centre (we checked out at 10am but they kindly looked after our bags until 3pm. One of the nasty things about travelling is the time between checkout and your next trip [and vice versa], and the issue of luggage minding. Since 9/11 this has become a real pain).
Internet Café
It was now 3pm and the train wasn’t until 7:40pm. We were packed with luggage and didn’t feel like sight-seeing as we were right next to the train station (there were luggage minding facilities at the youth hostel but it was a fair way down the road and I was a bit bored with bath). We decided to duck in at the internet café and surf for a while. Amy & I both surfed for 2 hours, and 2 cups of tea served to us. The total bill came to 15 pounds. The hippy guy was embarrassed to charge us that much and ended up charging us 13 pounds (I wasn’t worried - 2 hours of internet/power access + baggage storage was fine for me).
Royal Hotel Sports Bar
After we had our fill of Internet Surfing we headed down the pub to have some dinner. I had bangers and mash, and Amy had a ploughman's platter. The cricket was playing on the TV (West Indies v NZ) so I was entertained, and for once Amy didn’t object to me watching cricket (she was doing postcards). A couple of guys sitting nearby were complaining to each other about how hard life was (his flatmate lost his job, and couldn’t pay Road(?) tax etc), and seemed unhappy, I have had a few conversations now with Londoners and often they go on about how hard life is. (Maybe it is tough here, I have seen jobs here that pay 11,000 pounds pa. That doesn’t sound like a lot in Australian terms)
Finally we get on the train to London, it is only a 1 hour trip and passes uneventfully.
Arriving Hammersmith
We get a taxi from Paddington Station to Hammersmith (13 pounds) and arrive at the Western Premier Hotel. This place is a dump. Our room was in the basement. We had to carry our luggage down a narrow, steep, long flight of stairs. The bed in the room was 6 inches off the floor. The ceiling in the bathroom had severe water damage and looked on the verge of collapse. However we were tired, it was for only 1 night, it was 10pm and we would be checking out early tomorrow.
Sleep
I watched TV and saw a report about some Brit dying from legionnaires disease, and thought of the moldy bathroom next to us. This Brit died from legionnaires contracted while having a shower and that turned us off having a shower here, so we went to bed smelly (It is actually really hard to get smelly in Britain - the cold seems to ensure freshness for longer).
