Back from Bath and squeaky clean

We got home last night after a relaxing 2-day break in Bath. It's one of those places where a short jaunt is the perfect amount of time; the historic core of the city is very compact so it's easy to get around on foot and two days affords a leisurely look at the main historic sites and gave us a feel of the city. Our hotel was in a perfect spot, easy walking distance from the train station and a block away from the famous Roman Baths, the Pump Room and Bath Abbey. Our first morning had us walking up the 212 steps to the top of Bath Abbey. Since we were the only two people on the tour (the first of the day - it pays to be an early riser on holiday) we got the chance to ring the Abbey bells and also got to clamber into the underside of the church roof. We then went to the beautiful Assembly Rooms where big parties were held in the 18th and early 19th centuries. We then walked up to the famous "Circus" (a circular street of Georgian houses) and the beautiful Royal Crescent pictured here. We wandered through Victoria Park, enjoying the first sun we had seen in more than a week. Afterwards we went to the Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street, one of the streets she lived on. The museum presents the Bath of Jane Austen's day, both what she enjoyed and did not enjoy about living in the city. Since it's such a small place it was amazing to recognise the areas on the map where she lived during her years in Bath. That evening we enjoyed a lovely dinner at a restaurant set in the old Green Park train station, where a jazz trio performed featuring a great young female singer.

On Friday we spent several hours making our way through the fantastic and recently refurbished Roman Baths museum. This was a huge Roman bath and temple complex in the years 40 to about 400 AD, dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva (Sulis being the goddess worshipped by the local Celts and Minerva one of the Roman goddesses). The natural hot springs in Bath had always been a place of worship for people before they figured out a more mundane explanation for where all that warm bubbly water was coming from. The museum presents artifacts found in and around the hot spring and temple - one of the most fascinating of which I think are the "curses", little messages written to Sulis Minerva complaining mainly about petty annoyances (like the theft of clothing at the baths!) and wishing death, blindness and all other manner of horrible things on the culprits. I think these little scraps of metal on which people poured out their anger really bring you close to the people who lived there millennia ago. After seeing the ancient Roman baths you can go to the Georgian Pump Rooms above and sample the famous Bath waters. Although I am glad we did this, I am also really glad that I have never been prescribed a gallon of this water a day like some people were back when they went to Bath for healing. It is a bit like drinking liquid metal!

We really enjoyed our time in Bath and found the smaller crowds and nearly non-existent traffic noise a great break from London!

Handel's house

Another Saturday has come and gone. Since we've been to most of the major museums in London we have moved on to the slightly smaller and more obscure sights, discovering some interesting gems. Today we went to a fairly new museum (opened in 2001) that is set in the bachelor pad that George Frideric Handel lived in for the last 35 years of his life. It's a Georgian townhouse at 25 Brook Street in the Bond/Oxford area and it's a great little museum staffed by friendly volunteers. Handel lived in the house from 1723 til his death in 1759. It's an amazing place to visit as Handel composed most of his work after 1723 in the house itself (in the tiny composition room) and rehearsed with many of the top singers and performers in Europe in the rehearsal room. It's a modest space but you can imagine a workaholic bachelor living there, and the history of the place makes it well worth a visit, particularly if you are a fan of Handel's music. (An interesting aside is that in the 60's Jimi Hendrix lived in the flat next door!) The museum reminded me a lot of the Mozart house museum that I went to in Vienna this past summer (although Mozart certainly didn't live at that address nearly as long as Handel lived in this house in London). It really brings the composers alive to imagine them living and working within these spaces.

To continue on with our music-themed afternoon we went to Denmark Street in Soho, once considered the "tin pan alley of London". We had a nice time looking at all the specialist guitar shops (including the "Bass Cellar" and a store specializing in vintage guitars). So as not to walk away totally empty-handed, Keith bought some new guitar picks.

The Wallace Collection

Keith and I took our respective mothers' advice and went to the Wallace Collection today. The Wallace Collection is in the Baker Street area and is the personal art collection of the 4th Marquess of Hertford and his son Sir Richard Wallace put together mainly in the 19th century. The collection is still contained in the family's large London town home (Hertford House) which was bequeathed to the nation at the end of the 19th century and turned into a public museum. There were a few paintings that I recognized in the collection: The Swing, featuring a lovely lady in a pink frothy gown having a romantic idyll with her two male admirers (one of whom was originally supposed to be a Bishop, naughtily), The Laughing Cavalier (who is arguably neither) and a beautiful portrait of Madame de Pompadour. There are other paintings by Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Canaletto (Venetian scenes), Jan Steen - the list goes on and on. There is also a lot of French furniture, including more of Marie-Antoinette's stuff than what is now at Versailles. Other French pieces abound, including a lot of paintings and busts of Louis XIV through XVI. There are also a lot of paintings which feature dogs - always a hit with us. We liked the so much we picked up a calendar featuring the Dogs of the Wallace Collection. there is also a remarkably huge collection of early guns, cannons and armour. The museum was a great place to spend the afternoon because while there is a lot to see, it's not so big that the visit is stressful or exhausting. Very much recommended to anyone visiting London!

Movie

I made this movie using the website xtranormal - take a look!

A clean getaway

The weather has been dark and dreary for the most part all week, and in the last 2 days the temperature has dropped a fair bit. I think it was around 0 degrees or maybe slightly below. (I say this knowing that this week it's been as low as -25 in Toronto and -35 in Ottawa, so I realize that this probably sounds tropical!)

We just got back to our flat after spending the day 'uptown' in the Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross areas. For one of my assignments I needed a copy of an article that unfortunately Brunel's library did not have access to - although their selection of electronic journals is really vast, this just happened to be one that they didn't have a subscription to. I was told by the school librarian that I could either order a copy from the British Library for £7.50, or haul myself down to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where they have the only paper copy of the journal in London and photocopy it. I opted for the latter - the LSHTM (or just "the London School" as it is often called) is an English institution known very well to public health people (but probably not to many people outside that area). When I told people at work that I was going to study public health in London, the inevitable response was "At the London School?". So I wanted to take the opportunity to at least see this famous educational establishment. The young woman at the desk was extremely helpful, and was actually a Brunel alumni. Unfortunately the one journal issue that I needed was (of course) not in the box because it was away for binding, but she very kindly printed me a copy from their electronic holdings since she knew how far I had come to get it.

After our adventure at the LSHTM (and approximately one thousand hygiene-related jokes on Keith's part) we headed to Charing Cross and the National Portrait Gallery. After a nice lunch across from Trafalgar Square, we spent the afternoon hobnobbing with portraits of the rich and famous (and dead - we were in the Tudor and Regency sections and ran out of steam by the Victorian era). We will head back again at some point and see the rest of the gallery. I think it's one of my favourite galleries - and I liked it even better this time after reading more English history and understanding better who people were, and spending time in the places where these people lived and worked.

Food, glorious food

Well, maybe glorious isn't quite the right word...

People have been asking us what we cook here and about the price of food, so I thought I would do a blog entry about that. It seems like our grocery bill is less here than it is at home, but that is probably partly because we don't have a car here so we have to carry everything we buy home on the bus - and that certainly makes you very aware of every single item! Keith also has free lunches at work, so this certainly cuts down on our grocery bill and food preparation time.

Here are some of the staples from one of our grocery bills:

Loaf of bread (£1.19)
1L of lactose-free milk (£1.28)
Bag of rice (£1.59)
Can of baked beans (£0.44)
Pkg of 6 bagels (£1.00)
Pkg of back bacon (£2.00)
Jar of instant coffee (£4.00) (This is really expensive here!)
Pkg of 6 salad tomatoes (£0.95)
3lb of carrots (£1.00)
Bag of apples (£2.50) (Apples are expensive here too)
Bunch of bananas (£1.00)
Crisps (£1.19)
Chocolate bar (£0.45-£0.60)

As for cooking (and heating... since I can't claim that we make all these things from scratch), some of our staple meals are: chilli and rice, whole-wheat pasta and meat sauce, meat pies, chicken and vegetable stir-frys, quiche, and (my favourite) breakfast-for-dinner consisting of toast, beans and eggs. Mmmmmm. We are having that now. :0)

A January with no snow??!!

It's been a few weeks since I last updated our blog on New Year's Eve. Unfortunately the next day Keith came down with a very nasty flu which took him out of commission for about 4 days. Immediately after he was well enough to get out of bed I came down with a minor flu and cold. So we have spent the last few weeks gradually getting over our respective illnesses. But we are both feeling much better now!

Since we were sick for about two weeks in a row we didn't get out much (which was ok by me since I was in the final stages of writing two papers that were due last week). But this past Friday we had tickets to see the play War Horse at the New London Theatre near Covent Garden. We bought our tickets back in November so we had been looking forward to seeing the show for quite a while, and we had excellent seats (we normally get the "cheap seats" so it was a treat to be on the same level as the stage for a change!) The show was absolutely fantastic, probably one of the best theatre experiences either of us has ever had. Everything about it was wonderful - the storyling, the amazing puppets, the cast, the staging, the music. If you haven't heard about it look up the trailer on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bni4QqSv4

And of course what post from England would be complete without mentioning the weather? As this post title suggests, there is no snow on the ground. The birds are singing, the skies are... well, the skies are grey and overcast 99% of the time but the temperature is mild. It definitely does not feel like my idea of January!