England – Part 1

Our first trip to the UK was wonderful. We are so happy we made the decision to untether ourselves from North America and explore another part of the world. It was a great place to start and now we feel like it was simply the first of many trips to come.

September 1, Day 1: We boarded a plane on August 31st in Madison, flew to Detroit and then had a 4 hour layover before boarding our red eye for Heathrow, London. We tried to sleep as much as possible during our 6 hr and 40 min flight. I think we did sleep, but it most certainly wasn’t good sleep, and we arrived in a bit of a daze. After collecting our luggage we hopped a shuttle to the rental car office. It was small and crowded and took us almost another hour to get the car. We had decided when we booked it, to get an automatic transmission, which I think was one of our best decisions on this trip. Almost all of the rental cars have manual transmission which would have made driving on the left a much more daunting proposition. There wasn’t really any opportunity to practice in the car lot—it was full with very narrow aisles so we just had to face the road and London airport traffic head on. It was fairly easy getting on the M-5 and heading west towards Bath. Driving on a divided freeway, with all the cars heading in the same direction, didn’t seem that bad. We were lulled into a false sense of security until we arrived in Bath and ran into rush hour traffic and a endless jumble of narrow, winding streets and promptly got lost. Had to stop and ask a tour bus driver, who turned out to be Spanish and didn’t speak English, how to get to the hotel. Thankfully I had the address on a piece of paper and he had a GPS.

Bath, England. The Arylington was lovely and most certainly the best accommodation of the entire trip. Our room overlooked a perfectly groomed garden in the back of the guest house.

We stayed 3 nights and included breakfast in the dining room. Here’s the traditional, full english breakfast, vegetarian option. Of course I had to try it but decided that I preferred toast with jam.

September 2, Day 2: We found Bath to be a very nice city. We would go back there in a heartbeat. Our hotel was within walking distance to the city center, the roman baths, Bath Abbey, restaurants, parks and museums. We did a lot of walking during our 3 day stay. Here are some of the thing we saw and did.

A bridge over the River Avon.

Parade Gardens along the River in Bath.

Another view of Parade Garden.

Bath Abbey.

Inside the abbey.

Royal Victoria Park. The gardens were beginning to fade a bit. I’d like to see them in the spring when they are in full bloom.

Royal Victoria Park

Divided into three segments of equal length, the Circus is a circular space surrounded by large townhouses. Each of the curved segments faces one of the three entrances, ensuring that whichever way a visitor enters there is a classical facade straight ahead. Completed in 1766.

Bath Canal. We saw quite a few of these long boats on the canal. Because Bath is in the hills, and navigating uneven terrain would be impossible otherwise, there is a series of hand-operated locks that anyone traveling the canals has to negotiate.

Street market

• ← Puppies
• Horicon Marsh →