There had been talk all week about today’s trip to Bath, mainly the fact that there was a Jane Austen Museum there. We had to get up really early in order to catch the 8:30 train. When we got there, it turned out that if we took the 9:30 train, it would save £1,000. We all shuffled off, annoyed, to get coffee and/or tea. I found some fantastic chai in Paddington Station (there was a statue of the bear) and we hung out in front of a Krispy Kreme and played cards for a while. We hoped on the train and rode that for 1 1/2 hours, amusing ourselves along the way. When we got there, we walked around, marveled at all of the architecture, and then marveled some more. Bath is like the eternal resort town, so the town is very Georgian, rich and beautiful. Our first stop was the abbey, one of the oldest in England. It was lovely inside but so many people had been buried inside the church that it was near impossible to walk around without stepping on someone’s grave. A little before this though, I discovered something that would forever shape my trip to bath. They have a legend in Bath about King Bladud and because I’m lazy right now, I’m going to copy and paste from the King Bladud’s Pigs website. The year is 863BC. Bladud, King of the Britons and father of the unfortunate King Lear who was immortalised by Shakespeare, had spent much of his youth studying in Athens where he contracted leprosy. Returning home and realising that an imperfect prince could not inherit the throne, he left the royal palace in disguise to take a job as a swineherd in an "untravell'd part of the country". This was certainly the Avon Valley, and may well have been the area we know today as Keynsham - remembering that this was more than 1,000 years before the Romans built villas in Keynsham and a full 1,500 years before the Saxons founded our town. As Bladud drove his pigs in search of acorns he crossed the River Avon at shallows north of Saltford - at a place which subsequently took its name from the legend - Swineford. The rest of the story is famous. Bladud's pigs also contracted his disease but were cured when they rolled in the hot mud around Bath's springs. Observing the miracle, Bladud also bathed in the hot murky water and he too was cured. Returning home in triumph he went on to become King. In gratitude for his cure, Bladud founded a city at Bath and dedicated its curative powers to the Celtic goddess Sul and 900 years later the Romans called the city Aquae Sulis - the Waters of Sul. So, because it’s fun, they have these decorated pigs everywhere like they do in Chicago, Baltimore, and other big cities. There are one hundred pigs all over Bath and I wanted to take pictures of as many of them as I could. I ended up catching over twenty. My seminar group helped, any time someone saw a pig they would point it out to me. After the abbey we went into the Roman Baths. They were pretty nifty (there was a pig in the museum) but the audio tour took far too long. The water in the baths was also kind of creepy, through no fault of it’s own, the water is green and has a film over it. The green is from algae (the baths used to be enclosed) and the film made it kind of look like ramen and was probably there because no one’s been swimming around in it lately. Also, when you bought a ticket to see the baths you were given the option of strolling into the Pump Room, a posh restaurant, and sampling some of the bath water (filtered a couple of times) which we did. Honestly, it smelled like eggs and tasted like fish, not to mention it was warm. After the baths we settled on pasties, which are basically stews in pastry form and very good, for lunch. James got a giant steak and potato pasty that was so thick that it wouldn’t cool down. We walked around Bath for a while before heading over to the Hershel Museum. William and Caroline Hershel were Amanda’s ingenious people, hence our visit. The museum was pretty little and we were shown a movie that was pretty bad but the house itself was nice. At this point, we were given leave to split up and go our separate ways. Cheryl, Nicole, Alice, Meghan, Amanda, Ryan, and I all headed over to the Jane Austen Centre, not sure what we would find but excited none the less. It turned out to be the bastard step-child to the Jane Austen Museum in Hampshire. There was a woman who gave a quick talk on Jane Austen’s life, who was very good, and then a selection of dresses and props from the BBC movie “Miss. Austen Regrets,” although the museum did have a very nice shop. The best part of the whole museum had to be the tea room upstairs. Nicole left us after the exhibit so, the rest of our party headed up to the tea room and got two tables. The tea was expensive but totally worth it. Amanda and I got “Tea with the Austens” which was a pot of tea (I got Miss Austen’s tea, it’s a mix of black teas popular during the regency) three cheese and cucumber sandwiches, and a slice of cake (lemon drizzle for me) while Cheryl and Meghan shared a “Mr. Darcy’s tea” which was a whole lot of food. We took pictures and had lots of fun. It was all so good it made me want to go back to the tea house in Annapolis. Panda and I wanted to go look at some street vendors who were selling purses but by the time we left the Centre it was after five and beginning to drizzle so they were all breaking down. As we waited for our group to assemble, Panda and I popped in to a travel shop and bought postcards before we all walked back to the train station where I was granted two final hurrahs, pigs on either side of the platforms.