Bath

I've been away a couple of times in the last 10 days - first of all on a girls weekend to Bath in SW England - the beautiful, classical Georgian city oft mentioned in Jane Austen novels and home to Roman baths, a modern day hot spa, Georgian architecture, great shopping and eating. 

At any given time over the weekend there were between 3 and 9 of us, with 6 staying in the apartment we rented which was on Crescent Lane directly behind the Royal Crescent.

We chatted, laughed, boy did we laugh, some of us knitted, we ate, we wandered the shops, we visited the spa, the Fashion Museum and the Georgian House Museum, all whilst trying to dodge the rain!

Here we are at dinner to celebrate Karen's birthday in a gastro pub called The Chequers - highly recommended - the desserts especially! And for all you Americans who love history - it has apparently been a pub since 1776!

This was my enormous fish and chips - the chips were hiding underneath the fish and below is my apple dessert - it was a lovely combination of apple sorbet, an apply crisp, an apple bavarois, a creamy panacotta and a perfectly tiny little toffee apple. Yum! The chocolate plate looked just as amazing!

On Saturday we ate in Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant in the centre of Bath - this is one of the sharing plates below! I had tagliolini with wild rabbit ragu which was delicious.

This is Pulteney Bridge, one of the few bridges in the world with shops on it. Completed in 1773 it was designed by Robert Adam, a Scottish architect, one of the best known of his day. Pulteney Bridge is one of his best known works, but is has been much altered since his original work due to floods, road alterations etc. 

The Royal Crescent was built between 1767 and 1774 and consists of 30 homes built in a crescent of Georgian style. 

At Number 1 Royal Crescent you can visit, as we did, a museum that creates a wonderful picture of Georgian life, with it's interesting facts related to water closets, a lack of washing, beasties in hair wigs and eyebrows made from the fur of mice caught in traps - yes our forebears were delightful!

At the Fashion Museum you can see fashion through the ages and try on corsets and crinolines! That gave us some of our biggest laughs of the weekend! 

We visited the Thermae Spa - a modern day spa built to celebrate the Millennium where you can enjoy Britain's only natural thermal spa with a soak in the open air roof pool with its views over Bath, or try out the scented aroma steam rooms, the waterfall shower and the Minerva spa with its lazy river and hot tub. Add to that a cafe with great cake and you find a lovely way to spend a lazy afternoon.

Another fun afternoon was spent playing crazy golf in Victoria Park - it had been a long time!

All in all a fun weekend! Thanks for all the laughs girls!

Sorry the photos are a little dull - weather was grey and wet virtually all weekend!