Day 35

Today we actually left London. Again, sad day! In the morning we packed and got everything ready to go and out of our flat. Even though it was really small and cramped, I am going to miss our little flat! Then the four of us went to go take some pictures at Gloucester Road station and with Cactus Kid. In case you are wondering, Cactus Kid is just a man made out of a cactus that appears in the ads for Oasis fruit drinks. He is super attractive . . . or creepy. We walked back to our building for the last time from the station (I walked that mucho times) and got on the coach to embark on our magical traveling week of fun. Our first stop was Bath.

Apparently Bath is famous for its rain- and on our drive there it was pouring- but as soon as we got there the sun came out and it stopped raining. We had a couple of hours to kill before our group booking at the Roman Baths, so we decided to go over to the Jane Austen Centre. It is a museum-type place on Gay Street, which is the street of one of Jane’s many Bath residences. They had a little lecture thing about her life, then there was an exhibit about living in that time period and etc. My favorite was the fan that was available for you to try “the language of the fan.” Who knew so many feelings could be expressed with a simple gesture with a fan. After we of course went to the shop and looked at their Jane merchandise. They had this amazing choose your own adventure type book that put you into books like Pride and Prejudice and it was the best thing I have ever seen. Actually I take that back- also in the shop they had a framed picture of Mr. Darcy. There was a price tag on it that said “Mr. Darcy portrait- Priceless.” Haha! So then we left the museum to roam around Bath for a while since we still had a while. While doing so we discovered that all around Bath were these weird plastic pigs. Yes, it was strange. They were all the same size and shape, but decorated differently- one we found was even hanging from a tree I guess as like a piñata pig. So that was fun and interesting. Apparently they have these pigs to show tribute to some ancient king or something, but I don’t really know the connection. Finally at 3 was our time to go to the Baths. It was interesting, we had those audio guides that they give you so they don’t have to do an actual tour guide and I am getting kind of sick of those. Robyn and I started listening to the kid recordings because the grown-up ones were really boring, but then those started to have weird music and this lady started whispering some chant so we just gave up altogether on the audio guides. Bath is an interesting place though- the main hot spring is still warm although the water is all gross because algae and such grow in it. After the tour we went to try some of the water from the pump room (I refrained) and Robyn described it as tasting like hot hard boiled eggs. Yuck. After this we got back on the bus and drove to Wales!

Wales was the only country I hadn’t previously been to in the UK, so I was excited to finally go. We went to Cardiff where we spent the night at our hostel (I just love hostels so much). Actually this hostel was really nice compared to any we stayed at our first week, which is all because Robyn booked this one and not the other ones. Anyway, for dinner in Cardiff we went to a pub that used to be a theater! It was really cool, we sat on the first balcony to eat and we ordered at the bar which was where the stage used to be. I enjoyed the experience thoroughly. Then we went back to the hostel, and I enjoyed my last night of being 20.