April 18th Friday

Today was Tyler’s birthday! I wanted to mail him a postcard but I ran out of time.

Leslie got up at 9:00am and went running. I happily stayed in bed until 10:00. She woke me up when she got back. She’d come in with breakfast! She’s such a sweetheart. She’d made up some of the nice cereal with yogurt, banana, and jam.

We continued getting ready. We’d gone to the tourist office the day before and reserved a tour out to Stonehenge. Emily called us to let us know that the tour was cancelled because the driver was sick. We had a few options on what to do with our tour. We opted to do the same tour the next day.

For now, we decided to just meet up in town and figure out something to do. The weather was still gray and cold as it had been since we arrived in Bath. We decided to go to Sally Lunn’s. Leslie and I walked into town. On our way, we ran into a fudge shop. It was too delicious looking to resist so I bought a hunk of maple fudge. It was creamy and wonderful. I think it was made with real cream.

We ran into Glynnis along the way. The three of us went to Sally Lunn’s to wait for Casey and Emily. Sally Lunn’s is the oldest house in Bath. Sally was famous for, get this, her buns! She baked buns that would become a local specialty. We were there for some tea and lunch. Finally we were all together and we were shown to a table upstairs. I had a very nice tea. It’s loose leaf in the pot so that you have to pour it through a strainer. They bring you more hot water to refill your pot. I’m glad that I acquired the taste for tea.

To go with our tea we all ordered something for lunch. I had a menu that came with soup and a sandwich. The soup was vegetable soup and my sandwich had smoked salmon, with cream cheese and dill. It was quite good. For dessert, Emily and Casey ordered some of the famous buns. One was cinnamon and one was walnut coffee. They were pretty good. Glynnis left us part way through to try to go see a movie.

After lunch we went down to the basement kitchen museum. This was the actual kitchen where Sally Lunn made her buns. We got a free ticket with our meal. A good thing too because the “museum” was really just the small room. We joked about how upsetting it would be to actually buy a ticket and come down and see this. It was interesting but there really wasn’t that much to it.

We left Sally Lunn’s and met up with Glynnis at 3:30pm. We went around and looked into different shops. While we were shopping, I got a call on my cell from my landlord M. Choupin. He was calling to say that he needed one of us to return the mattress because his daughter was going to be staying there. I told him that I was in Bath right now but that I’d call Adrienne and let her know. He said “Really? I’m in England too!” It was a funny coincidence.

At one point, Emily had to go try to secretly buy a birthday cake for Leslie. When Leslie asked where Emily went, we made up some lie about her going to get phone credit. We were really bad liars and I thought she’d see right through it. Especially since Emily showed up and said “Oh, I need to get credit on my phone.”

We looked around and shopped for a while before heading back to Leslie’s. She and I walked pretty fast because we both had to pee very badly. We finally got there and were able to relax. We had some quiet time for a bit. Then it was time for Leslie’s early birthday celebration. We were going to the famous Bath spa!

We got ready for the spa and headed down into town. We met there at 7:00pm. It was £22 to get in for a few hours. It wasn’t a bad price at all. They gave us bracelets that would let us enter and then lock our lockers. We changed and locked up our things. We headed to the very top floor. They had a rooftop pool. It had a beautiful view of the abbey and the surroundings, but it was cold and windy up there. The pool was steaming so we expected it to be warm. It wasn’t much warmer than the average swimming pool. We had some fun up there and then decided it was time to go to the next part of the spa. We ran through the icy wind to the stairwell.

We went down a level to the sauna room. We walked into a large room that felt warmer and slightly humid. There were four glass cylinder rooms that had steam saunas in them. In the center of the big room there was a big waterfall. Water fell from the ceiling into the drain. We were able to go up and stand underneath it. It was warm and pounded on our shoulders. The water was lit up with different colored lights.

We tried the different sauna rooms and discovered that they had different scents. I made the mistake of going into the “mint” room first. It felt like the mint was burning my eyes. I left and tried some of the other ones. The other scents were lavender, mint and eucalyptus, and frankincense. I tried enjoying the saunas but I couldn’t really relax in them. Since I come from Colorado I’m used to really dry air. I felt like I was suffocating on the steam. My lungs don’t like wet air.

There were some other things to enjoy in the room. There were foot baths where we could put our feet in warm bubbling water. There were also showers in two of the corners. One side was hot and the other was cold. We all enjoyed the hot showers.

After the saunas we went down to the lowest level. Here there was a very large pool that was almost in the shape of a four leaf clover. The water was warmer here and people were floating about with the help of foam noodles. We soaked up the warm water and floated and talked. We discovered that the pool had a slow current in it as well. We had fun making a chain and letting it take us around the lazy river.

The spa was an amazing experience. Some of us went back up to the rooftop pool while others went to the sauna. I was on the roof. It was still cold but the view was amazing. As we got up there they lit the lights on the abbey. We stayed for a bit and then went down to the sauna room to warm up before changing.
We changed clothes and got ready to leave. We were some of the last people leaving. I accidentally left my umbrella in the changing stall so I had to go back and get it. Then we were ready to go find food. We were all quite hungry. We walked a short distance and came upon an Italian restaurant. We all got pizzas there. This made me feel nostalgic because after my brother and I would go swimming as kids in the summer, our dad would take us somewhere fun to eat like pizza. My pizza was quite good. It had dried tomatoes, onions, capers, and sausage.

After dinner we all walked home. I went to bed around 11:30pm.