So we walked on to the Georgian circus, which is a ring of buildings around a giant roundabout. The idea was that no matter which door you walked out of, you'd see the facade of buildings straight ahead. The whole time we were in Bath, Tay kept asking me what the difference between Georgian and Palladian, and I kept giving him really wimpy answers like "Well, Georgian is a lot more fussy than Palladian" or "Georgian is British and more recent, while Palladian is Italian and older."
After our walking tour, we met back up with dad and had lunch at the Pump Room, which is a very large old building which used to house the pumps in the Georgian baths, which are right next door and right above the ancient Roman baths. We ate a nice meal there, and lots of hot tea. We decided to forego the tour of the ancient Roman baths because, well, none of us were that interested and there didn't seem to be much of the Roman baths left above the water line.
However, the pump room did offer glasses of water from the Bath springs. Tay had to have a glass before we left, so we shared a cup. It was warm, minerally, and unpleasant, especially with the sulfur in the water giving it a less than pleasant smell and taste.
Our time at Bath was at an end. I was amazed that we'd spent so long in Bath yet none of us had wrinkled fingers.
We drove on to Lacock, a tiny village about 30 minutes outside of Bath. The village is ancient, and the houses there have slate and thatched roofs, waddle and daub construction. Quiet, cobblestone streets. It has been used in several films, most recently for several scenes in the Harry Potter series. All of the scenes in Godrick's Hollow were filmed here, so we saw the church graveyard where Harry and Hermione found his parents grave, as well as the Potter residence, which showed up in the first Harry Movie as flashback. Tay wanted me to take a photo of him in front of it, and was kind of embarrassed and little surprised when a little girl skipped up to him and asked if he could stand aside and let her go home. The nearby Abbey was also used extensively for scenes in Hogwarts and the courtyard.
We drove on, taking a detour through Salisbury. Dad actually asked me if I wanted to see Stonehenge, but I was not that interested or curious. I know its a lot of history embedded in the stones 3000 years old, and its a marvel that it was able to be built, but it just doesn't resonate with me. We went on to the city instead, parked in the city center and walked to the cathedral instead. It was well after dark at this point, and the cathedral was beautifully lit at night. The spire is actually the tallest in the UK.
We stopped for a pint in the Haunch of Venison, supposedly the oldest pub in Salisbury. It surely looked it, and actually has the oldest pewter bar in the UK. Tiny, tiny place. There were only four people sitting downstairs, and we still had to go upstairs to find seating. There, we found a mummified hand on display in a niche in the wall, supposedly the hand of a gambler who was found cheating at cards and suffered the loss of that hand. He's one of the pair of ghosts supposed to haunt the place. Supposedly as well, Eisenhower and Churchill had a pint here during WWII, planning out the D-Day invasion. Actually, I'd be amazed if they were in any public place, let alone discussing one of the most closely guarded secrets of WWII. Still a cool bar for a pint.
We drove on and had dinner at a really nice place called the Cyder Inn, really far off the beaten path, and actually a working inn as well.
The final stop for the night was at an old favorite- the Refectory, for some STP- sticky toffee pudding, which is pretty much the pinnacle of deserts.
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