Notes from Bath

[catherineldf]

Of the jumbled variety since we're at the local Internet cafe (WiFi at our B&B died).
So far we've managed to check out:

• The local bookbindery (they invited Jana back for a quickie tour on our way out of town tomorrow). They do terrific work, BTW - Bayton's Bindery, in case it's of interest. And they had a full set of Jeffrey Farnol's novels; I picked up 3 I haven't read yet. :-)
• The Jane Austen Center, which was disappointing, but had to be checked out. Exhibits are kind of feeble, recap of her life not much better and the gift shops was sad and tacky. For reasons unclear, much of the place is a shrine to...Colin Firth. Even the bathrooms. Not the main character in the novel, people, and moreover, not actually in the novel. Unimpressed.
• Went to Mr. B'S Emporium of Reading Delights. Marvelous, marvelous indie bookstore.
• The Royal Crescent, which is spectacular. The house museum there is well worth the trip.
• The Fashion Museum, which was fun. I tried on a hoop skirt - this was about as comfortable as you'd expect.
• The Roman Baths, which are HUGE and elaborate. I had no idea of the scale, despite having read quite a bit about them. Really interesting tour
• The Royal Theater where we caught a production of "Secrets of Sherlock Holmes" - good staging, good performances, not much story and ending went splat, alas. The theater's quite amazing though.
• Random odds and ends - checked out the front of one of Austen's actual houses; ate at Sally Lund's, the oldest continually functioning building in Bath, apart from the actual Baths; ate Bath buns, which were okay but not memorable; drank tea and ate scones at the semi-erotic bakery across from the Pump Room while watching street performers, including a gentleman with a remarkable steampunk set up for creating his own percussion; stopped in at Marks and Spenser's, which was disappointing; walked a lot and wandered in and out of many little shops.
• Were foiled of attempts to go to the Wookie Hole Papermill and the Pump Room. "Foiled" in this case means that the former was made unappealing by having been made part of an amusement park and the latter was completely booked, it being Mother's Day here.

Off to Wales tomorrow.  The adventure continues!