Trip – EU2011-02 Plymouth and Bath UK

Plymouth UK and Bath UK
October 1-2, 2011
Trip to Europe 2011

01-Oct-11
After a strange breakfast at the hotel, where service never happens the same as the US, we headed off to Paddington Station for the train towards Penzance, our destination for the night in Plymouth.

Plymouth, the town where the Americas cup is held was surprising. The housing around the train station felt completely dead, not a soul on the street to the hotel, that also had nobody, just a key in the box.

Plymouth has a university, and much housing near it with many piles of empties out front of them. The city does have a large new “Circus” (or mall) and thru it you can get to the small section of the old town that survived bombing in World War 2. A great meal at YukiSan, some sushi and wasabi steak, seagulls squawking out the door.

02-Oct-11
After a large breakfast of white scrambled eggs, brown toast, creamed coffee and some meaty bacon, ran for the train to head to Bath. The second time on a Great Western train, with bad smelling hot sandwiches that people seem to want badly, even though the pre-packaged ones look much better. One of the “Hot” sandwiches (just tossed in microwave) smelled to foul I tossed it before I would take a bite. Great Western is close to AmTrak quality, except the trains all travel over 100 MPH, and are ON TIME… so it’s the winner there.

BATH… Checked into The Henry on Henry Street, and made our way to the front of the roman bath to take a walking tour, which was very Informative of some of the different buildings and how the town continually goes through real estate bubbles since it was created. Cut the tour short to take the time to go through the roman bath before tour times ended. After a quick pasty at The West Cornwall Pasty Company, walked back to the bath entry. The lines were gone and there was plenty of time to go thru by avoiding listening to the “stories” on the listening device that would probably take 3 hours if you did all the information stories. The Roman Bath is pretty amazing to see, and all the areas around it that have been excavated.

Not having time, skipped having Tea in the Pump Room and went for a walk up the hill to the Circus and Royal Crescent Houses. The buildings in all of Bath are amazing, except of course one new building that’s being built will have a glass front in the middle of the old. Tragic stupidity.

We finished the touring with a walk through the Bath Abbey, then dinner at a fren-glish/tapas restaurant called Bistro La Barrique (closed now) with a table on the street. Other than the people watching, I wish we would have eaten at Jaimie Olivers Italian place, but didn’t find that until after..