Bath, England

Over the bank holiday weekend, Becky and I spent three days in Bath. Here's the quick rundown. Highlights:

• Stonehenge: Big rocks rock. I wonder what archaeologists will think 5000 years in the future when they see a stone circle surrounded by a circular path walked by hundreds of thousands of visitors each year and situated near the crossroads of two highways. Somehow I suspect that "pilgrims" and "tourists" look devilishly similar in the archaeological record.
• Roman Baths: Interesting museum complex with cool catwalks over the excavated temples.
• American Museum: Yes, it's odd for an American to visit this museum in Britain, but it was intriguing to revisit years of history classes in a single museum. It's a stark reminder that any sort of national museum is massively distilled, but the displays were well designed so we still found it engaging.
• Food: Not sure if this is specific to Bath or a fluke of better planning than normal, but we went to some really good restaurants. Two favorites were Demuths (desert: poached pears with lemon mascarpone cheese and sprinkled with crunchy honeycomb and fresh thyme - sounds crazy but the flavor was totally unique and very good) and The Fine Cheese Co (lunch: unpasteurized cheddar and chutney sandwich - simple and tasty).

Other sights included Bath Abbey, The Royal Crescent, Museum at Number 1 Royal Crescent (good), Building of Bath Museum (eh), Great Pulteney Street, various public gardens, and the closed doors of several sights that didn't bother to open on Bank Holiday Monday. This segues nicely to lowlights of the trip:

• Bath Rugby Team Party: The Bath Rugby team had a party in the garden next door to the hotel. And they had a DJ playing outside until 1:30am. And the police showed up but couldn't shut it down because it was the responsibility of the environmental agency to address sound complaints. HUH?
• Manual train switching: I love National Rail when it works. But when it doesn't it's a pain. Immediately after leaving London we were informed the train required "manual switching" which I don't know what that means but it resulted in us driving at about 10 mph and arriving an hour and a half late.
• Bath Spring Water: Healing properties be damned! The stuff tastes like stagnant well-water filtered with dirt.