Welcome back! When we last saw our heroines, they were flat-out knackered and collapsed once more in their beds in the Regency Hotel in South Kensington, their bellies...
The second half of our recent trip to the UK was spent in Bath. You may recall that we fell very much in love with Bath on our last, brief visit.
Alas, by the time we reached this delightful city the second time around, we were both more than a little sick with our respective head colds, both regularly downing copious amounts of Lemsip, and both needing frequenter and frequenter naps.
But the weather cooperated, and we wandered through the streets of Bath in a Lemsip-induced haze for three days, each of us basically going our own ways and following our own chosen footpaths.
We took the train from Paddington Station in London. Now, I used to live in New York (state, that is), and I've taken the trains in and out of Penn Station and Grand Central Station plenty of times, so I very knowingly girded myself for what I consider to be The Usual Big City Train Station Experience.
Forgetting entirely, of course, that London Does Everything Better.
First of all, the trains -- and the station itself -- were clean. Secondly, ours at least ran on time. And we had reserved seats. That was weird. Wonderful. But deeply weird, to walk onto a train in London and find a little tag hanging on the back of the seat with my name on it.
Yeah, that's Melissa's hand, trying to give the Safety Pamphlet bunny ears before I could snap a picture of it. That's kind of what travelling with us is like.
Then I took a picture of each station we passed through, so that I could remember the names of the towns we passed through. And because I am the most annoying kind of completist, frankly.
When we got to Bath and got ourselves properly settled into our rooms, my first order of business was to find a shoe store. My much beloved Converses had basically exploded somewhere along life's way -- I'm guessing somewhere halfway through our epic wander around St. James' Square and Piccadilly -- and they were actually causing me tremendous pain at this point, so little did they resemble anything functional like a "shoe."
Needless to say, I found the perfect shop somewhere along Milsom Street, famed street of shops going back hundreds of years. My friends, Milsom Street did not disappoint.
As you can see, they had a fine collection of Converses. But after a great deal of dithering, I went with the green suede Puma Clydes. They are awesome.
A prosaic start to my visit to the fabled city of Bath? Perhaps. But I knew that I was far from finished with the walking all over the place, so I kitted myself out for the rigors ahead.
And then I wandered. Oh, did I wander.
If you're of a mind to peruse the whole collection of photos from OMGLondon2, of course, you can just go right over here. Sprinkled liberally with various short videos, too.
I've got a few more things to wrap up about this trip, including more explicit thanks to the incredibly kind and gracious author Adrian Tinniswood, who took the time to give me a personal guided tour of No. 1 Royal Crescent, but for now I'll just leave you with thoughts of sleeping in Bath, in early spring, with the sweet air slipping in through the open window of your very own back-of-the-house bedroom. Smelling brightly, despite the night, of forsythia, of grass.
