Bath

Last night, we stayed in Bristol. It was another late arrival, after Chunneling back to England, getting caught in London rush-hour traffic, then doing the 3 1/2 hr drive northwest to Bristol. Googlemap directions are ok up to a point, but often their road names do not match the street signs. Enter "the girlfriend". She's the GPS app on P's iphone, and she's saved our tails more than once this trip. Unfortunately, she takes a lot of battery power to work, so when she ran down, we took to plugging her into P's laptop for an external power source.
This morning, of the options she gave us to get to Bath, we took the easiest road away from the Marriott College Green, a beautiful hotel in the heart of Bristol, which opened in the 1860s and has been open as a hotel ever since.
Our first stop today, was Thermae Bath Spa. When we came to Bath 8 years ago, I had really (!!) wanted to have the kids experience the hot springs. I followed closely the status reports on construction of the new baths facility. Alas, they were behind schedule, and while we didn't have a chance to soak in the waters then, we soaked in the history instead. Indeed of all our travels, the audiotour at the Roman Baths in Bath remains everyone's #1 best tour anywhere.
Today, we soaked in the waters. There are 2 facilities now: the new building, which houses a large open-air, rooftop bath, as well as many spa treatment rooms, and the Cross spa, across the street. This is the Cross spa. It is on the site of one of the original Roman baths, and it is open air too. So are the changing spaces - kinda chilly today, but at least it wasn't snowing! We were there for an hour, and it was divine. I'd almost go so far as to say it was worth the wait. We floated under some sun, but mostly we watched the rain clouds move in.
Then, we went to Sally Lunn's. She was a Hugenot who moved to Bath in the mid 1600s and made a version of a french brioche. The building where the restaurant is (and where she lived and worked) is the oldest in Bath, and dates from 1456 or so. Last trip, E had her Sally Lunn bun drowned in chocolate spread. This trip, we drowned our buns in clotted cream, strawberry preserves, and in my case, cinnamon sugar spread. For the record, one has half a bun, because each bun is about the size of a salad plate. Add a good cup of tea, and you're all set.
Shopping. Yay. Shoes, dresses, oh my! The boys were tolerant. We ended up with 2 dresses, one pair of shoes, one new ipod case, and a very nice cookie jar shaped like an english cottage.
For dinner, we found a pub so P could have his pint of 'real ale'. Then we hit the car, and the highway, in the rain, until we made it safely to here, the Heathrow Marriot. P has done a magnificent job of driving this week, through all kinds of crazy weather. It frustrates me to no end that our French blizzard didn't get any press coverage at home. The blizzard started Monday, and by Thursday, the major highway north out of Paris was still unusable because of stalled cars and trucks who had been stuck there for over 48 hours. The road to Cherbourg was still closed because over 300 cars were still covered in snow! It boggles the mind.
While this hasn't exactly been the holiday we imagined, we saw and experienced things we wouldn't have otherwise; we met kind people who took care of us; we stayed positive, and have some new crazy stories to add to the family collection (shovelling the driveway with breakfast trays anyone? I should have taken pictures).