Bath

As we had a hire car, we drove to Bath which is only about half an hour away from Bristol. Unlike Bristol, Bath is a very beautiful city. This is The Circus, a residential street in Bath featuring the characteristic Georgian apartments made from Bath sandstone. Real estate is very expensive here. One of these apartments would set you back about $3 million Australian dollars.

Just down from The Circus is the Jane Austen Centre! 

And if you need to use the bathroom while you're there it's easy to work out which is which!

This tiny little jewellery shop in the city centre carries the Royal Crest because Princess Victoria (who later became Queen Victoria) visited here. That said, Queen Victoria was not a big fan of Bath (more on that later).

We also found this butcher shop in the city centre and guess what their specialty was? Are you feeling like some Wild Boar and Apricot sausage?

Then we visited the Roman Baths. Hail Julius Caesar!

And this quote from the first century about people attending the Roman baths made me think of John Manning and the Bathurst pool!

We found this very beautiful park down by the river but had to make a dash out of the pouring rain!

Unfortunately, we only had one night in Bath, and stayed at a lovely BnB in a place called Combe Down.  It was very quirky and this guy watched us the whole time we had dinner.

Back to Queen Victoria! Apparently, she became quite offended by something written about her by a journalist from Bath so she vowed never ever to visit the city again. Later on the ladies of Bath went to a lot of trouble erecting a statue in her honour. The story goes that she declined the invitation to the unveiling and any time she passed through Bath by train she closed the blinds!