Memorial Day Weekend 2013: Bibury and Chedsworth Roman Villa

We woke up Monday morning to a beautiful sunny day once again. It didn’t take us long to pack our bags, eat a quick breakfast and check out from our place. Our first stop was Bibury, in the middle of Cotswolds. Cotswolds, in short, is a beautiful area of rolling hills and pastures with picturesque villages scattered all around. It is designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (a few areas throughout the UK are AONB).

Our GPS must be crazy-haha. It took us through the tiniest roads that are supposed to be two-way roads. It is definitely nerve wrecking as you are driving and hoping that the next vehicle that will want to pass you will be a small sedan.  

So I read a lot about Bibury, a famous village in the Cotswolds. We found it with no problem, and so did about two hundred Japanese tourists-haha. We were very lucky to find a great parking spot near the village school since it was school break. The village basically lives for tourists (I am not sure who goes to that village school) but it is still a very quiet place to visit. Not many touristy shops, just a nice walk by the river and near Arlington row of houses.

This what an Arlington Row of houses is—cottages built in 1380 as a monastic wool store and converted into weavers' cottages in the 17th century.

We kept wondering if people actually live there still.

Probably says “No Trout Sushi Here”, since there is a big trout farm across the street. But seriously, don’t know what it says, apparently it was needed there because of the number of Japanese tourists in the village.

The weather was gorgeous, so we spent some time just walking around.

…And taking pictures.

From Bibury, we headed to Chedsworth Roman Villa—a National Trust sight (so free for us), home of some of the most rich people in the country in the 4th century.

If we had just walked through the sight and just took a look at each room for a moment, we’d be done in ten minutes. Because we had audio guides again, we were able to spend an hour or so at this place, marveling AGAIN (haha) at the way the Romans built their bathhouses and toilets, mosaic appliques and even under floor heating.

Mark was playing with some “artifacts” from Roman times.

This is one of the rooms where you could take a bath. Apparently, it was considered a thing of status to be able to spend a whole day soaking in a bath. If you are in a bath, then someone must be doing all the work for you, which means you have slaves.

The audio guide told us about every room  in the villa. It was incredible to imagine that many centuries ago something so substantial stood on these grounds. There are several Roman villas in the area, some smaller in size, as it seems that the Romans really liked that area of England. Again, everything was completely destroyed after the Romans left as the Celts didn’t know how to take care of such “complex” structures.

Pictures we took don’t show much of what is left of the building. We were busy following the audio guide, I guess. There is a lot of excavating still to be done and new artifacts are found to this day. A very educational sight for our kids.

The drive home was very peaceful. Lots of sheep.

And beautiful blue sky over yellow fields.

Finally, around 2:20 pm, we stopped in Cheltenham for lunch. I am glad I had looked up the place to eat for lunch on Tripadvisor before our trip, because the food was delicious! It is called Turkish Grille. We got there just forty minutes before they were closing for a break, but they still agreed to cook for us. Yum! It was traditional Turkish food (although, of course, I have no idea what Turkish food tastes like in Turkey) and the best baklava I had ever had (with pistachios!). 

We were so stuffed from our late lunch, that when we got home around 6 pm, no one was hungry. We just had a few snacks and put the kids to bed.

Although it feels like it was such a quick trip, we saw a lot. I know that most British just laugh at us for driving so far and staying for just a couple of nights, but that’s the way it’s gonna have to be if we want to see many places. We have been here for almost ten months now! Time is ticking away.
Our next trip—next week for three nights in Belgium. It should be interesting since this time we are going to cross the channel on the ferry (Robert is already bracing himself;).
Good night.
Lyana.

Memorial Day Weekend 2013: In The Footsteps of Harry Potter-Lacock Abbey.

We were running late…my original itinerary included a relaxing visit to Lacock Village, a picturesque walking village about twenty minutes away from Bath. We got to Lacock at around 4:30pm. We realized we did not have enough time to go through the village if we wanted to get to our “hotel” before dinner. All we could do was visit Lacock Abbey. And we had only five more minutes before they would finish visiting hours of the state rooms inside the abbey.

We ran and got there just in time. There were no audio guides this time, but lots of plaques with explanation of bits of history in each room. This Lacock abbey was built in the beginning of the 13th century and was an acting monastery until 16th century when Henry VIII ordered the Dissolution of Monasteries.  The king also sold it to Sir William Sharington who converted it into a house. It was passed from one owner to another owner for centuries until it ended up in the Talbot family. In 1944, Matilda Talbot who was not married and had no children gave the building and the grounds to the National Trust.

Walking through the abbey rooms was very interesting because we were able to ask the workers in each room to tell us more stories about the house.

In one room, we saw a ton of huge books. In fact, books were everywhere in the house. You wonder, how old some of them are.

In another room was this grand piano—we were allowed to sit down and play it, which the kids really liked.

We saw the Great Hall with all the statues to greet the visitors, passed through a number of bedrooms and even bathrooms that helped us imagine what it was like to live in the house a hundred years ago (the bathroom did not look too different from our current ancient bathroom-haha). We also saw the room which is believed to be a special room in which one of the owners used to spend a lot of time just counting and recounting his coins. I guess, some suspect that he was snipping tiny parts of the coins to get gold and sell it.

Downstairs, we were able to see where the nuns used to walk and worship.

Some rooms were spookier than others.

Not sure who used to be buried here and where they are now.

Of course, walking through the house might not sound like an interesting thing to do for kids, but for some reason ours actually enjoyed it this time…..Possibly because on the way to here, I told them that the cloisters of the abbey were the place where some of the parts of “Harry Potter” movies were filmed!

Do these look familiar?

According to Wikipedia, some parts of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets were filmed here, including the cloister walk where Harry comes out from Professor Lockhart's room after serving detention and hears the basilisk.  From http://www.findhogwarts.com I found out that Snape’s classroom and home of Professor Quirell were set at the abbey.  Also, the Chapter House is where Harry first discovers the Mirror of Erised!

This was also the place where the sixth Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  The spooky nights of Hogwarts were also filmed here. Of course, the kids were excited!

Here is The Cauldron that we can see in Harry’s classroom.

A couple of other movies you might have heard of that were filmed here are “The Other Boleyn Girl” and “Pride and Prejudice” (BBC production) from 1995. 

Here is where I am imagining to be the other Boleyn Girl.

We left Lacock Abbey around 6 o’clock. The sun had absolutely no intention to set!

We headed towards Cotswolds Service Center-the place where we were staying, merely ten minutes away. Three reasons why we picked this place to stay were —it was twenty minutes away from Bath, it had three bedrooms, and it cost us $15 per night for ALL of us! It was nothing fancy, but clean and tidy for a good night sleep. This place is dedicated specifically for all Royal Armed Forces and visiting forces (that’s us), that is why it is so inexpensive.

We dropped off our bags and tried to find a place to eat. The closest place Neston Country Inn turned out to be the best pick in that area. The food was delicious!  That is why I had a Portobello mushroom burger twice there (although it’s called “field mushroom” here)! 

And that was the end of Day 1.

This is where you are supposed to read our blog post about Bath.

In summary: Day 2—Bath.

Memorial Day Weekend 2013: Stonehenge And Avebury.

Hope you enjoyed our previous blog post by Robert—his appearance is rare on this blog now because he is simply too busy. He made an exception last night by writing that entry because he figured he had to practice the writing section of his GRE test, so why not write on our blog? I am glad I convinced him. So he was so blog-happy that he kind of skipped ahead and forgot to write about what happened before we got to Bath.

We had three days and two nights. Our route was Our House-Stonehenge-Avebury-Lacock village-Bath-Cotswolds. We left bright and early on Saturday morning, which also turned out to be the first day of the spring break for most schools in Britain AND a three day weekend for the UK because of their May Bank Holiday coinciding with our Memorial Day. Well, we did not realize that it would make such a difference but it did! We headed southwest from our house, counting on a 2.5 hour drive to Stonehenge…and so did everyone else, it seemed. As soon as we got to the major motorway going west of London approaching Heathrow, we were stuck in traffic, for forever…..The problem was that everyone was going southwest (not to Stonehenge) to Cornwall and Devon—to the British coast. So instead of 2.5 hours we were driving for over 4 hours.

We got to Stonehenge, parked somewhere off the beaten track because it was so busy in the official parking lot and walked over to the stones. I had very LOW expectations. Many Americans have told us, “Yeah, Stonehenge is just a pile of rocks and you cannot really get close to them, so it was disappointing”.  Because I was not expecting much, I was actually very impressed. It was not just cool to be next to one of the most famous pile of rocks, it was just cool to realize how long they had been there and what people did in that area centuries ago.

It also helped that the entrance for the whole family was free because we are National Trust members (it was free for English Heritage as well, otherwise about 7 GBP-$11). We received the audio guides that helped us understand a lot more about Stonehenge. It took us about 45 minutes to walk around the monument with kids listening to their kids’ version of the guide.

Of course, we took a ton of pictures from all different directions.

Mark’s attention span only lasted about ten minutes. After that he did not want to listen to the guide, but was interested in finding all the numbers along the guided walk.

Katya’s version of “picking up” Stonehenge.

And Alex’s version of “holding” Stonehenge.

Alex, wrong country, buddy. This is not Egypt.

Mark’s Egyptian pose.

I think this is the side of Stonehenge that most people have seen on pictures.

Oh yeah, family pictures at Stonenge.

It was around 2 pm when we finally left Stonehenge. We were off our schedule, and although I know we were going to miss out on some of the things I had planned, I was not stressed. We ate our packed lunch in the car and now headed to our next stop—Avebury.

Apparently, we were passing through some serious military zones because for many miles we saw these signs for “Tank Crossing”.

So, Avebury. Why did we go there? Was one pile of rocks not enough? What’s different about Avebury is that we can actually get close to the rocks and touch them. Avebury is a henge that consists of three stone circles constructed in 2600 BC. The brochure for Avebury states that this is the only place in the world where you’ll find a pub and a chapel inside a stone circle.

We spent some time running around the stones, but because we were short on time, we did not get to go to the Old Farmyard, Avebur Manor or garden (entrance was free for us again because we are National Trust members).

Mark’s favorite part of Avebury were not the rocks—it was rolling down the hill.

On this picture you can see the stone circle better. They were scattered of a large area.

If we ever go back to this area, I would make sure to take a guided tour offered to visitors. Our kids love tours for some reason and it forces them to behave better in front of strangers-hehe. 

All right, this is a good place for a break.

Memorial Day Weekend 2013: Bath

SURPRISE!!  It’s me, Robert.  I am actually writing this post.  Don’t believe me?  You think this is Lyana writing in disguise?  Well, let me prove it.  You see this first picture?  Lyana thinks I just took it because it’s of some old dead Roman guy in Bath.  Actually, I took it so I could zoom in on the guy’s teeth to analyze ancient dental work.  See that space just in front of the last tooth in his mouth on the top?  Yeah, he’s missing tooth #3.  And if if you look closely, his teeth are extremely worn down, which is likely because whatever he ate was quite abrasive.  And don’t get me started on his periodontitis.  He’s got a pretty advanced case of bone loss – particularly evident around the molars as the furcations are completely exposed, and not just because his gums are missing.   Now are you convinced it’s me writing this?  Good.  Now on with the post. 

We spent an entire day in Bath, one of the most famous cities in England, and we barely even scratched the surface of what this wonderful place has to offer.  Bath is most famous for, yup you guessed it, it’s baths.  There are still several fancy hot baths/spas in the city in use today, but the most well-known one is the enormous Roman Bath house in the middle of the town.  It was originally built by the Romans around 40 A.D., then developed and used extensively until the Romans left England in the fourth century.  Forgotten, it fell into ruin until the Normans arrived in 1066 A.D. and basically rebuilt over the top of it.  That lasted for a while until they too left it to crumble (forgot the year – check Widipedia), and eventually it was rediscovered in the 19th century when some guys were digging in the area and came upon it.  For the record, the tour-guide presented it with much for detail, so you’ll just have to go to get the full idea.

Now the place is a museum full of all sorts of relics and things from the Roman times.  Like this coffin that Mark is sitting over.  He’s listening to the audio tour in his right ear. 

This statue is of the “goddess with crazy hair” that the baths were dedicated to.    She’s depicted all over the place.

Outside is the main pool where the actual bathing occurred.  Not your typical bath (or onsen for that matter).

Surprisingly, the kids found the place interesting from the very beginning.  Although there were times when we shouted things like, “don’t jump over the water!” and “use the footbridge” all went' well without incident. 

That is until this picture.  No, we didn’t fall into the bath immediately after.  Actually, I placed our backpacks and some jackets against the wall, right in front of us across the path, and while were posing one of the workers came and told us that we couldn’t leave our stuff unattended for security reasons.  Lyana was nice enough to take her jacket and place it next to her (see in the photo), but then she asked me if the rest of stuff belonged to us.  I just wanted to get the picture over with, so I ignored her inquiries, smiled at the camera (a stranger was taking the photo) and through my teeth I said loudly, “hurry up and take the picture”.  Then I jumped up and gathered out things before she called for backup.

We decided the Romans loved bathing.  In fact, they felt so strongly about the beneficial health properties of the natural hot springs that made the bath, they eventually figured that if it’s good for the outside of the body, surely it must be good for the inside too.  Yup, they drank their bath water . . . after bathing.  And that is what you can do at the end of the tour, if you’re brave enough.  There’s cups just for that purpose.  Mind you, this water hasn’t been bathed in; in fact, it’s filtered and comes from much higher up the line than the bath itself.  That doesn’t mean it tastes good.  In fact it’s the worse hot spring water I’ve ever tasted.  It’s so full of iron that it actually tastes like blood (iron is what makes your blood taste the way it does, by the way).  Some of you diehard blog readers (all one of you) probably remember that we’ve tasted hot spring water before, in Budapest.  That one tasted like rotton eggs, because of the high sulfur content.  That was nasty too, but not this nasty.

After just over an hour of engaging Roman education, we left the bathhouse for bigger and brighter things.  Yes, the weather was absolutely spectacular during that weekend.  Sunny skies and warm sunniness. 

We walked around a bit, trying to find a few of the other most notable sights in Bath.  We found the Jane Austen center . . . but didn’t go inside but it was expensive and unlikely that our three kids would stand for it (they're not Charlotte Bronte fans yet).  So we found another place.  Lyana can edit this post later because, true to form, I forgot the name of the building (further proof that it is me writing this post), but it should be said that many famous movies, like Pride and Prejudice, were filmed in it’s ballrooms.  You might remember those chandeliers from one of the scenes.  I don’t remember, but maybe you will.  What I remember is that the lady said they were insured for 1.5 million british pounds EACH.  That’s a lot of dough – over 2 million dollars!!

Bath is very famous for it’s looooooong row houses., like this one.  I didn’t think it had the same historic grandeur with all the Peugots and Smart Cars in front of it.  But still neat to see.  (Lyana just stepped in to tell me the names of a few places.  This one is called “The Circus”, not because of the clowns everywhere, though there was a guy in kilt just standing in the center, but because there are two semicircle shaped row houses with a round lawn in the middle).

We were exhausted (mostly me … see, taking a nap next to Mark) so we found this enormous garden for relaxing and picnicking.  This place was called the ‘Crescent’ because there was just one very very long U-shaped row house next to the lawn, so it looked like a . . . yup, a crescent shape.

We’d just bought a few books from the bookstore, and of course the kids couldn’t wait to break into them.

Mark even got some exercise running back and forth to the tree . .  to the tree.

Alex reading his book.

We just had to see the Pultney bridge, with it’s shops and storefronts crammed on top of it.  Here’s a view of the uglier side.

And if a bridge could have a front side, I assume this would be it because it looks better.  We stopped by the grocery store up the road for ice cream.  Tell me we’re not the only ones that do this:  we wanted to buy ice cream for the kids, but didn’t want to spend 2 british pounds ($3) or more for EACH treat at the local store.  So we just walked into the supermarket next door, and right there in the freezer case there was a sale “two boxes for 3 pounds” (that’s $5 dollars folks), and there were four treats in each box!!  That’s a bargain if I ever saw one.  So that’s 1 for Lyana, 1 for Katya, 1 for Alex, 1 for Mark, 2 for me and a 2 extra to hand out to kids on the street before they melt.  Best ice cream ever (and not just because they were Cadbury Caramel, and Oreo).

Oh look, another view of the same bridge from below.  Even cooler now that we can say we walked across it (Ooooooo).

More proof of this perfect English day.

Mark + hill =

More beauty all around.  And then there’s Alex who is looking around.

No, this is not Bath anymore.  And yes, you’re right, I did not properly transition the post from Bath to this hay bale maze.  The last place in Bath that we visited was of course a glass-blowing shop.  We didn’t get to see any glass-blowing in action (that’ll have to be next time) but we did get a glass something-or-rather.  It was a squished bottle that I can use as a serving dish, and before you judge me, I liked it, and when it comes to art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Case closed.

So the hay bales.  We went to a “deer farm” so we could check out the deer.  It was 200 acres of rolling green hills, and we walked for quite a while.  First we went to the “kids area” so they could use up some of their energy. 

On hay bales.

On tractors.

And on logs.

But we didn’t see any deer.  Only cows and their pies . . . lots of pies.  So after a lot of cow potty jokes, we eventually made it back to our car and headed back toward our “hotel”.  We tried to find a place to eat on the way, but everything was closed.  So we eventually went back to the same restaurant from the night before (because it was just that good).  Lyana ordered the same thing (Mushroom Burger – that’s where the mushroom IS the burger; a giant portobello mushroom that is) and I was just about to get the bacon burger (a real burger with bacon on it that I had the night before and it was fantastic) but then I heard the special which was beef roast on a bun.  Where’s the beef from? Lyana asked.  Gesturing over her shoulder with her head, the hostess said, “just across the street.”  SOLD.  It was yummy too.

Rob