My Funny Valentines

I arrived into Bath by train in the afternoon. I walked into the tourist office and said, "I have one day in Bath. What should I see?" The office was incredibly helpful in providing me maps of the area and some advice on nearby hostels. I choose the YMCA because it had a good location near the main part of town. I walked the 5-6 blocks to the place and it cost about 18 pounds to be housed in a room with 10 beds. Thankfully, not many people were staying there so I was in a room with maybe 5 people, but during my entire stay I never saw one of them. I was the last one to bed and the first one up the next morning. Anyway, I took the opportunity to look around the town while it was sunny and nice...plus I wasn't too tired either. I wasn't sure if I was going to stay one or two nights because I figured I'd checkout the town first to see how much I could see.

The town was beautiful!! A great place to spend Valentine's Day....even alone. It's kind of a spa town so the feel of the place was very calm and soothing. The Abbey was the centerpiece of the town in terms of the overall view. Just across the plaza from the Abbey were the Roman Baths which the lady at the tourist office said was the main attraction of Bath. I walked in and it looked like a day spa. All the people around me were holding these large beachy looking bags. I was wondering if this attraction was just a big spa. I looked at the price list and you could get a day pass, a weekly pass, a monthly pass, or a yearly pass. I thought, "I think this is a day spa". I stood in line, because it was a little long, and pondered what I should do. Before I knew it, a lady handed me a flyer and I was convinced this was a day spa. So, I decided to go in even though I didn't have anything to wear. I figured I'd dip my feet in and take a few photos. I got up and I paid my 12 pounds with a smirk on my face thinking, "What the hell am I doing?" He then directs me on where to pick up the audio device and reminds me not to touch the untreated water. I was laughing inside. How silly was I? Anyway, the place was a World Heritage Site and was the site of where the Romans would bathe and worship. This facility was pretty incredible! I think I took some of the best photos of my trip because the lighting was great, shadows were in the right spot, there was a nice reflection of the waters, and up top you got a great view the Abbey. I just played around with my camera settings and took my time trying to capture some unique shot. I had the time! So, why not? While I'm not a big fan of the audio tours I must say that this one was pretty darn good. Instead of rambling on and on and on....you could type into the device what area you wanted to hear about. They had these plaques all over the place with numbers and you'd just type in the number if you wanted to hear about the area. It took me about an hour to go through the whole thing. Three things really stood out for me. (1) The stones you are walking on the actual stones that the Romans walked on. (2) That the Roman's had brightly colored buildings and my perception of all these white pillars was false. (3) There was a statue of a head in the Temple of Sulis Minerva (It was Sulis Minerva's head) that very few Roman's ever got to view....and you'd be inches away starring right at it. Pretty cool, I think. Oh, and did you know that the Roman's had a gift shop where I could by a postcard? Ha Ha kidding!

I walked around the town a little more, but I was starting to get hungry and so I found a really unique place just around the corner from the hostel called, "The Pig and Fiddle" which sounds like a Perry Gripp song title. That one is for you Noreen! Anyway, they had an assortment of local beers and ales in addition to some food that is less common in America. They had several varieties of meat to put in a burger and so I had a Kangaroo Burger....or what I called, "Roo Burger". That one is for you Lily! It was pretty good!!! I also tried a local beer called, "Hedge Monkey", but by now I had forgotten that English beer is warm. So I ate Roo and washed it down with a Monkey. When I was done I went back over to the bartender and said, "The beer you suggested was great, but I need something cold". He let me try a few shots of several different local cold beers. They all tasted very sweet; almost like juice. I picked the least sweet one. So, I went back to my table, drank my cold sweet beer, and looked around the bar. I noticed a sign on the wall saying, "Monday night is Quiz Night - 1 pound per person - max is 6 per team". I thought, "Oh hell yeah, I need to assemble a team!"

I went back to the hostel for a couple of hours to go online, rest from walking, and maybe try to get a trivia team. The people in the hostel seemed a bit too quiet and too focused on their computers so I decided not to speak up. These two girls started talking about Valentines Day and how it sucked to be alone in a hostel and such. I was laughing under my breath at their comments because I had some of the same feelings. I piped up about the trivia night around the corner and offered to pay for the first round of beers it they would be willing to be my team mates. They looked at me and uncomfortably laughed....yep, I'm use to that look. They said they might join me and walked out of the hostel. I figured that would be the last I'd see of them. Well, to my surprise they came back and said they wanted to join me. We were out the door and I had just met Margueritte from Florida and Emily from Australia. We walked in and got set up with our beer, trivia cards, and decided on a team name, "Team Ramrod". We chatted and had a fun time talking about our studies and our travels. They were very awesome girls to laugh and chat with! When the trivia started we were doing pretty good I think. Not far from us was a guy looking over at our answers and listening to our discussions. I said, "This guy is cheating!" and when we all looked up he said, "No, your answer to number 3 is wrong, it's....such and such". I said, "Sir, I think you need to join our team". He came down and joined us, his name was John and he was Brit. It turned out that John was a pretty smart guy! We rocked the movie category!!!! Go team Ramrod! Our weakness was the anagrams..."Where is my sister Heather when I need her?" I said to myself. I was of no help during that round. I bought us another round and then John bought the next. It was so much fun! Would you believe that we came in 4th Place? Not too bad! I had so much fun joking around with everyone and I think we all had a great time. The two girls were particularly funny! John was funny because he was a Brit. Margueritte and I formed a little "America alliance" as we complained about how British people can not give directions. SEE LONDON BLOG FOR DETAILS ON THIS POINT. Sadly, John had to leave, but the three of us continued to talk, joke, and laugh some more. We even got another beer. At one point a girl from another table comes over and asks, "So, this may sound like a stupid question, but is the Roman Spa like a day spa? I mean, do you go into the spa?" I laughed! It made me feel less stupid for having the same impression. Once it got late we decided to head back to the hostel. We each gave each other big hugs and went our separate ways. It was kind of sad for me because this was the first real group of people I had met at a hostel where we got the chance to go out and have fun together. I didn't want the night to end. While they went back to their rooms I decided to take a walk so I could soak in and savor the whole experience. When I came back I crashed, I was so tired.

I woke up the next morning about 6am and was the first one out of the room. I got cleaned up, packed my things, and heading downstairs to use the Internet. By this time I knew that I wasn't going to stay in Bath another night. I pretty much covered what I wanted to see the day before. There were a couple of other sights, but I figured I'd be back. I spent most of the morning trying to research my plan. The train in Wales was horribly expensive and it would have been slightly cheaper to take the train back to London and then fly to Dublin...skipping Wales entirely. However, I decided that I really wanted to go to Snowdonia National Park and I paid the........ahh......80 pounds to get there. Let's not forget that I still need to pay for my train ticket out of Wales too. Anyway, I picked a small town in the middle of the park called, "Dolgsarrog". I picked it because it's small, its in the middle of Snowdonia, and I have no idea how to pronounce it. Even some of the people at the ticket office couldn't pronounce it for me. When I asked, "Do you know of another place that would be better?" (Please keep in mind that I'm asking this and the train for all these places will depart in less than 15-minutes). One women says, "Oh, I've never been to Snowdonia, but I hear it's quite lovely". She refers me to another office for advice. There response, "Oh I don't know where it is, but I hear it's quite lovely". Regardless of where I go in Snowdonia, I think I'm going to like this place! Well, I got on my train to Newport and the ticket taker looked at my ticket and said, "I've never heard of this place, where is it located?" I said, "In Snowdonia" and he replied, "Oh, that's a lovely area" and walks on. At Newport I change trains and head for Llandudno. Another ticket taker grabs my ticket and says, "Sorry to bother you sir, but I have no idea where this is." I say, "It's in Snowdonia" and he says, "Oh, that's a lovely area". At this point the people sitting across the isle had overheard our exchange of words and the lady leans forward (just as the ticket taker was walking away) and says, "Oh, that is quite a lovely area".

I'm still on the train to Llandudno. I'll get there about 3pm and then I hop on a bus to Dolgarrog. It's funny. I didn't think I'd have that much time to write about my travels, but being on the train is a great opportunity. You can really only lookout the window for so long. So, you can tell how long my train rides are based on the length of my latest blog. Oh, and maybe I should bring up another comment since I have the time. My apologies for my misspellings and poor grammar. I'm writing these blogs on NotePad and not Word so I don't have spell-check. Also, the train can get bumpy and my finger slips and I don't catch it on my proofread or whatever....just a disclaimer.

Oh crap! I forgot to mention something. I went to load my photos this morning at the hostel and my camera said, "Memory Card Error". I cannot view my photos or take anymore with that memory card. I think I can fix it, but I'll post my photos from yesterday if I can recover them. I'm not overly worried since I've been backing up everything so the most I would loose is one days worth of photos. It had to be be the day that I took some good ones too. Oh well! I saw Margueritte and Emily this morning and Margueritte was nice enough to give me what she had from Quiz night. So, here are a couple for you:

Margueritte & Emily

Me

Team Ramrod! (John not pictured)