Jay and Ashley's European Adventure: Need a Bath

Warning - This post is potentially NSFW. If you don't know what that means, you'll figure it out when you get to the bottom and the title of this post will become clear.

I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking. We went to Bath, Swindon and Oxford this past weekend. Working the adventure backwards on this one...

Sunday was spent in Oxford.

First objective, find some sort of medeival structure to climb... lucky for us every friggin town we go to has one! Here are some pics from the top of Carfax tower located in the center of Oxford:

Carfax tower - the name was derived from the french for Crossroads.. not the company that researches your car VIN and gives you a report. They haven't started selling off sponsorships for their ancient buildings in England yet.

After freezing our butts off on the top of the tower, we grabbed some lunch at a great little cafe Ashley spotted down a random side street and tried to warm up a bit before our 2 hour walking tour.

The walking adventure begins.. we had the most awkward tour guide assigned to us, Ashley remembered her name for some reason - Sally. Sally would provide some great little piece of trivia, then stare at everyone for 30-45 seconds without saying anything, not moving, just staring. Then we'd move on.

Sally: "George Washington's Great-Great-Grandfather went to this school and took off without paying his debt. In 1924 some Canadian & American lawyers visited and paid off the debt without interest."

staring....... silence......everyone else looking around at everyone else....... silence......

Sally: "Let's go, um, over, um, this, um, way....."

UHHHHH.... great Sally, you're friggin riveting.

Back to the pics:

Exeter College, famous graduate: J.R.R. Tolkien and RICHARD BURTON ! No idea who he is.

Crew is the most popular sport at Oxford, with their biggest rival being Cambridge, of course. When a crew on crew gets 4 "bumps" in a season (which is apparently difficult, I'm sure you guys are all Crew experts), they get to do some art on the side of the buildings at the college. Here's an example from 2005... there's still remnants going back into the early 90's on some walls.

From Exeter, we went on to New College. Famous graduate: Hugh Grant, Fellow: Richard Dawkins.

New College also maintains a section of the original wall that surrounded the city.

New College courtyard. You can also see part of the New College Cathedral:

The students dining hall. The students come to dinner in gowns, which is a tradition they voted to keep. Fellows and their guests are seated at the front of the room. The hall is exactly as it would have been when it was originally built:

And finally, a really intense sculpture in the nave of New College Cathedral... when we walked in I was so focused on trying to get feeling back in my face from the blistering cold that when I looked up and saw this, it caught me by surprise, my eyes popped open and I fell in love with it immediately. It's probably 8 feet high and the freaky way the head was contorted and looking over the shoulder of a wrapped body was completely unexpected. Probably the coolest piece of art I've seen the entire trip.. it represents Lazarus in the tomb..

The walking tour finally concluded and we remembered that our tour guide pointed out a Science Museum near us that had free admission - so to get out of the cold (and find a bathroom), we ran in and found this:

It's an original chalkboard that was preserved following a lecture from Albert Einstein. Random, but pretty neat.

Finally - on our way out of Oxford, we bumped into the 4th street vendor on our trip:

Back to Swindon. Ashley's favorite trip in the UK so far.... why would that be? Ancient relics? Rare finds? Unexplored territories? Oh no, wait a minute, they have OUTLETS in England??

Whew, made it just in time to spend a couple hundred bucks. That was close. :)

That's all I have to say about Swindon, except you get what you pay for when it comes to hotels. Just know that and you're good.

Now it's Saturday. We set out for Bath Park & Ride and some 4 yr old kid, who's mouth never stopped running the entire trip from Park & Ride to City Center, points out a random pig in a schoolyard. Then we saw another one in a market, so I was on the hunt for pigs for the rest of our stay in Bath.. later found out it was part of a massive public art project, these are the remants that never made it through auction I guess. You'll see them scattered among the posts below..

Hey look, another medieval cathedral! It really does show the power and wealth the Church held. This is Bath Abbey, quite imposing in the center of town, it easily outclasses any surrounding buildings:

After a tour of the Abbey, we made our way to the Roman baths. Quick fact, the baths are still fed via the same pump system the Romans built. Approximately 250,000 gallons a day of piping hot spring water... they throw in a free glass of it at the end of the tour, it's delicious, you should really try some.....

The red-nosed romans. A campaign to raise money through laughter to help disadvantaged people in the UK and Africa..

This place is enormous. The pictures don't do it justice, here's a random pool that sick people would float in to get healed by the waters.

Lookout.. random pig!

Trying to catch a breather and let my feet rest. Ahh.. nice comfy rock.

PIGS

Pulteney Bridge with shops lining both sides. From gift shops to clothing stores.

Found this maze in a park below the bridge as we wandered randomly around bath.. Ashley sat around freezing, hoping some of the little kids would run into me so she could catch it on camera. And to point out that I was the only adult trying to make it through... :)

Hey, it's the 3rd street vendor we encountered on our trip... this is getting interesting.. that's a guy. Probably the most obscene thing we'll see in Bath... mwahaha

Yep, found another one. This pig was in the middle of nowhere, I barely caught it out of the corner of my eye and made Ashley walk down to the building it was on so I could get a pic:

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Well, we're back to the beginning of our weekend trip and the Grande Finale! We made it to Bath, a properous, sophisticated, classy city. A city of nobles. We jump off the bus in the city center, turn the corner and see a crowd gathering. What the......