One of the last things Marisa and I were able to do, was to visit

Buckingham Palace.  Once the Queen leaves for her summer 

holiday, they open up the State rooms to us commoners.  We also

saw the Mews, where the horses are stabled and the cars and

coaches are kept, and where the Household Calvary lives. 

The Household Calvary has a tradition going back generations.

and many of the employees are following in the footsteps of their

parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. The black 

carriage is the one both the Queen and Princess Di rode in to 

their weddings. We also saw the Queen's art collection in the 

Royal Gallery. 

The inside of the palace is amazing, it's hard to believe people 

actually live and work there and attend dinners and functions 

in the elaborately decorated and gold-covered rooms.  One of 

my favorites was the Music Room that had a beautiful view of the 

gardens, where the Queen receives visitors before going to dinner 

in the very formal dining room next door. It is beautifully 

decorated and has a warm and inviting feel to it!  Marisa and I had 

taken a walking tour on a day when the Queen was having one of 

her many summer Garden Parties. (Guess our invitation got lost 

in the mail!)  Our guide told us to be on the look-out for 

"smartly dressed party-goers" as we walked down Constitution 

Hill, and we saw many! Later that evening, as we headed back in 

to town for a play, we saw them all leaving the Palace after the 

party. It was fun to see the Palace Gardens were they had all been.

These are some pictures of the neighborhood we came to love

on Cromwell and Gloucester Rd.  The first two photos are of a

flat, a few blocks from ours on Cromwell, where Alfred Hitchcock

lived for 3 years or so.  You can barely see the blue marker behind 

us. The street photos are shots of places we went every day.  Our

Gloucester Rd tube station, the Waitrose grocery store, Boots

Pharmacy and of course Starbucks, not so much KFC and 

Burger King, altho it was the girls favorite place to head 

whenever they could! Paul's French Bakery was dangerously 

close to the flat, just right around the corner and always 

crowded. You could order a sandwich and a pastry and sit at

a table on the street and people watch. I loved being able to walk 

to the places nearby. I miss our neighborhood already! 

Sadly, we had to leave the Cotswolds after only one night. We 

had planned to do some walking out in the countryside, but it 

was raining hard that day, and it kept us from venturing out.

Our guide picked us up at our hotel and took us down to Bath

by way of the Gloucester Cathedral, where we stopped for

a quick visit. The site itself has been a place of worship for 

over 1300 years, the abbey church building was started in

1089. Thru the centuries there have been repairs and con-

servation rather than rebuilding or remodeling. It is a 

very beautiful Cathedral, and we stopped there on the 

advice of our friend Brian. Thanks Brian!

Once we were in Bath, we checked in to our hotel in the

Royal Crescent and were once again treated like royalty,

something the Brits do very well when they feel like it!

The Royal Crescent houses part of the hotel and about 30 

townhomes. It was built by architect John Wood in the 

Georgian era and is one of the greatest examples of Georgian 

architecture in the UK  and helped turn the city into an elegant, 

desirable town. That's John Wood the Younger, just so you 

don't get him confused w/his dad the elder:) Dad and son were 

unfortunately both into the occult and masonic symbolism 

and evidently if you view the Royal Crescent, the Circus below 

it and two nearby streets, they form the sun, moon and other 

masonic shapes. It is a beautiful hotel w/gorgeous gardens 

and a spa that, again we didn't have time to take advantage of! 

It is just a little too stuffy and had an unsettling feel to it. And they 

don't quite know what to do with American tourists that show up 

for breakfast wearing jeans and North Face jackets instead of heels 

and satin slacks. But, oh well, it was raining hard all day and we 

were planning on being outside in the elements! We were rained

on most of the morning with the wind blowing our umbrellas

inside out every few minutes.  Even by Seattle standards it was

a miserable day to start with! The sun did come out eventually

and then the city was beautiful!

Visiting the Roman and Medieval Baths was an incredible

experience.  What used to be called Aquae Sulis after the

goddess of the original inhabitants, before the Romans, became

known as Bath to Ancient Romans who travelled often

from Londinium, to take a bath in the mineral springs and 

offer a sacrifices at the temple to the goddess Minerva.

A museum surrounds the baths now, and is filled w/ancient

artifacts. You're able to see the entrance to the temple and

the baths themselves, where the sacrifices were made. The

structure around the baths are the same as when the Romans

built them. The water is greenish now, but then it was clear

due to some engineering marvel I can't quite remember the

details on!

In the photos you'll see a greenish pool filled w/coins,that is 

the source, or what they called the sacred springs. One of the 

exhibits I loved was of tiny, oval-shaped precious stones, with 

minuscule etchings on them, that they believe were probably from 

signet rings.  Bathers might have lost them while bathing 

and hundreds of them were found in the drains during 

excavations.  The only remaining part of the statue of Minerva, 

covered in gold, is her head. It looks as if the head was cut off

the statue w/a blade and the theory is, it's the work of

Christian conquerors who took a sword to it.  I don't have 

a problem w/that! The mineral springs themselves have 

been in and out of use over the centuries and had a huge 

resurgence during the Georgian days of Bath.  The new 

Thermae Bath Spa opened a few years ago and Marisa 

and I got a chance to visit.  Terry had to leave on an earlier 

train back to London after lunch, so we were on our own 

the rest of the day, including the train ride home, which 

turned out to be exciting :) We thought the Spa was nice.

They have every conceivable kind of spa treatment and

massage to take advantage of, but darn, we were short 

on time and couldn't! The water in the pools was warm 

but not as hot as I would have liked. There are two pools, 

one indoor and a roof top outdoor pool. It was cool and 

breezy outside that day and we'd had a fair amount of rain, 

so I wasn't up for trying it. Marisa was the brave one, however 

and said it was alot warmer than the indoor pool.  If you've ever 

been to the Sol Duc Hot Springs in the Olympic Nat'l Forest,

(or sat in the hot springs at Murrietta), Thermae just doesn't 

compare. It was very relaxing tho and the mineral water 

very soothing. The changing rooms are co-ed, which is a very 

European thing, but a little unsettling for us! After we'd changed,

it was time to rush off to the train station and head back to

London.