Bathing Beauty - Day 12

On Saturday we were whisked away in a bus half full of Koreans, the other half being full of too many ethnicities to name, to Bath - The home of Roman ruins, Georgian architecture and Jane Austin. The day was actually fairly uneventful. Obviously we saw a bunch of stuff, but Georgian as it is, most of the city looks like the rest of the city. Uniformity you know. There are two events of the day worth sharing though. I'll give you the slightly less fun one first.

I.

At the Roman baths is a big museum (to keep people distracted by information other than the water they aren't supposed to jump into). At the start of the tour you walk around the top of the pool, looking down, then go inside to what was originally the temple dedicated Sulis and Minerva. It starts with stone carvings, then a room for spoons and shoes and a skeleton of a Roman, etc. Then you get to the room of dedications - pretty much stone podiums that people paid to have put in the temple in honor of someone. Then there is the place people went to buy curses - written on lead and thrown in the pool against someone who did them wrong. I am not anti mythology by any means, but at about this point I'm really starting to feel the unhappy atmosphere of the place. A little sick feeling starts creeping into my stomach as we walk up the steps to the next room and I immediately figure out why. There is the original temple courtyard and the original altar the priest made sacrifices on and the original Minerva statue that he made them to. I feel like crying and right when we walk past the statue, Nathaniel starts screaming and will not calm down. At the moment I thought he was just bored of it, tired and uncomfortable because he cries about that a lot, but in hindsight that was obviously not the problem. When we got outside to the pool he calmed down and was okay. There wasn't really a point to telling this other than seeing the spirituality of our son was pretty neat and it reminded me to be more aware of what we expose him to.

II.

After the tour my out of shape hips were aching. We were sitting on a bench, resting until we got cold and discussing where to eat. Jon says "Should we look at the guide or just ask Holy Spirit where to go?" While I know HS would tell us something I opted away from that option because in my experience, HS usually has a round about way of doing things and I didn't want to walk extra. We check the cheap places in the guide and can't find them except the "California style" one that we obviously could not be okay with choosing. We walk back to the Walrus and Carpenter and the sign says Lunch 11:00-2:00, Dinner 6:00-8:00. It is currently 3:30. Dang! Jon asks if they are still serving lunch. No. Disheartened by our failure and the probability of having to walk more I despair on the sidewalk. I tell Jon to just ask Holy Spirit since we are failing. He won't. Says I have to. I'm convinced I can't hear him currently. "Well?" asketh Jon. "The only thing I'm getting is the third place in the second column of the guide." He busts it out... Lo and behold - third place, second column - The Walrus and The Carpenter - the place we're sitting in front of. This further fuels my frustration. Jon makes me go in and ask again. "Yeah, we're serving right now" I'm told. Crazy Holy Spirit. It ended up being one of the coolest places ever! We had Carrot Coriander soup, Avocado and Blue Cheese Pate' with Toast, and Tomato, Basil, Mozzarella Salad. Tasty tasty. On top of that, the owner of the place chatted with us the entire time we were there. Told us how he got the place and how the roof was bombed off in WWII, and how England and America are two countries separated by a common language. So fun. Then we ran back to the bus so we wouldn't get left. The End.