Bath

I must first thank my friend Chris Ruffles and his family for hosting my Bath expedition.

Bath is one of those places that the guidebooks highly recommend - and this one is for good reason.

Tourist-wise the city has, well, baths, or natural hot springs. You can pay to see the much-intact ruins of the old Roman baths, which I must grudgingly admit is worth the price of entry. You get to see the still-steaming baths, old statues and writings, and, if this matter, you can photograph all of it. They also have a "free" audio-tour if that's your thing...

There's also a lovely cathedral which is "free" except that you'll have to pay a few pounds because of the horrible guilt-inducing power of old ladies. I'm sorry I don't go to church, CHRIST! oh...oops. There's also a nifty older church ruins under the cathedral.

Oh, there's a Jane Austen thing and some old buildings, too.

As a town to hang out in and a community, Bath seems to have the advantage I've noticed in a lot of smaller European cities - namely, even if you live on a hill in the pretty suburbs, you can still walk anywhere in the city given half an hour. There are plenty of green spaces for chavs (sp?) or miscreant youngsters to hang out in. English hooligans are a lot of fun, we even had a bottle thrown at us!

We went out to a couple bars...pretty standard British fair - fine atmosphere, overexpensive beer, although I recommend the local Gem bitter.

Chris's bar hosts a number of fascinating locals. Not to say that they're an exhibit! Their ancient wisdom will stay with me always, although I can't say I remember much of it...it being obtained in a bar and all.

Anyway, Bath gets a end-of-history/eternal recurrence.