a jam packed weekend

the race to the end continues...

friday night saw episode three of the second season of come dine with me where karen dazzled us with her culinary skillz of mini toad-in-a-hole, beef casserole with cabbage and mash, followed by chocolate pots with orange biscuits. wow...can you say full! season two has been packed with comfort food and well, its hard not to grade comfort food high when its just so yum and...comforting.

on saturday i returned to bath with my friend laura. it had been quite some time since i'd been here - a year and a half to be honest - so it was nice to walk around and see those familiar sites, even though we were being dumped on by torrential downpours. funny how i checked the weather forecast that morning and it said sunny intervals with light rain at 10 am. ya. right. luckily i ignored the forecast and packed my puffy coat. athough can i say one thing that irritated us that day???? everytime we went indoors (so jane austen. lunch, dinner and spa-hhhhing, the sun came out. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

richard bertinet cookery school

so no pics of the early part of the day but to be honest, i'd been there a couple of times before so what was new included the culinary treats and the spaaaaaaaaaaaah. so yes, we saw the circus, we saw the royal crescent, the abbey and the market. i walked by richard bertinet's (where i had my bread making course) and we had a jaunt at the jane austen museum.

i have to say the guide made me laugh though. not one who comfortably speaks to large groups she barreled through her memorized text of ms. austen's life, pausing where there should have been laughter but there was none because half of the people couldn't understand her rapid fire english being yelled at them. sigh. but i got some cool pics and decided i'm not so obsessed with ms. austen herself (unless her love interest is played by james mcavoy of course) but more along the lines of her heroes. namely mr. knightly. but i digress.

newspaper from 1799 at jane austen museum

but here's where to eat if you want delish food in bath. yes, you could go to jamie's italian, but i'd recommend going to same same but different for lunch. the food was incredibly yummy and it felt like comfort food (i sense a trend). winter = cold weather = hibernation =- comfort food. laura had mac and cheese with hazlenut pesto. PESTO! it was amazing. i went for the grilled goat cheese salad and if it wasn't such bad manners, i'd of licked the plate clean.

we made our way to the thermae bath spa. and treated ourselves to 2 hours of warmth. we hit the roof top pool (not as warm as i wanted), then the minerva bath which was wamer (and in the basement) and then we hit the steam rooms twice. so many steam rooms to choose from but my faves was the eucalyptus mint. man, our sinuses were clear for the rest of the day!

the rooftop pool

we rounded out our evening at beaujolais restaurant and the food was incredible. i had the lamb shank...it just fell apart anytime your fork was within a whisper of the meat. amazing! the ride home was very restful and warm...after spa-hhhing, eating and wine drinking, i was a blob of butter the whole way home.

the next morning (talk about punishing schedule) laura and i met again at paddington to head out to oxford for the day. now let me clear something up for you...when you say i'm going to oxford, essentially the whole town is the university comprised of 30 some odd colleges within the uni. its not to say each of these colleges are all chums...there are inter college rivalries but when i say i went to visit christ church college...its one of the colleges in the university of oxford. got it? ok...let's move on

we went to 2 of the colleges. :) ha ha. and passed so many more but it is near impossible to see them all. also, you have to pay a fee to enter the colleges and because people are going to school there and working, you stick to certain public areas.

a view from the loos at magdalen college

the first college we went to was magdalen college. it is by far the most picturesque of the colleges and i tell you, even the toilets were pretty. the college houses 600 students (400 undergrads and 200 graduates) with 70 fellows (a dozen are residents) focusing on the sciences and humanities. they students are taught in tutorials and often one-to-one...talk about lucky. if you want to read a bit more about the history of the school, visit this link. there were some pretty notable students in its time like CS Lewis (Narnia), oscar wilde and T E Lawrence (aka lawrence of arabia), and seven of the fellows have been awarded the nobel prizes. they're also the home to a local deer herd. the first deer in the grove dates back to 1705 and lucky us, we got to see them up close.  historical fact: from the great tower, during the may morning celebration, there is singing from the top of the choir at 6 am in the morning...although when you talk to the residents...the singing isn't something that happens first thing in the morning but more along the lines of last thing the drunk students do before retiring from a night of celebrating!

me and magdalen college

we didn't have time to visit merton college but if i ever get there again, its my first destination. its not the most picturesque nor the biggest but the history is fascinating in its own right. historically it is the most important college - opened in 1264 - and it set the model for colleges in both oxford and cambridge to be the first to gather its students and tutors together in one place. it also retains some of its original medieval buildings. next time!

we made our way instead to christ church college. the most notable is the tom tower, added by christopher wren (st. pauls among other buildings) in 1681 and it hosts the great tom bell...but frankly, i love ben more. :)  this school was apparently founded twice...originally by thomas wolsey (educated at magdalen) but of course, he wasn't in favour of henry's divorce from catherine of aragon so wolsey was stripped of his property including cardinal college...which henry refounded as christ church.

lewis carrol (pen name of charles dodgson) was schooled here as well...and of course this is where he met the dean's daughter alice, inspiring alice's adventures in wonderland and through the looking glass. in the dining hall of the college high on the left hand wall the fifth window from teh entrance shows portraits of alice adn creatures from the book.

but this dining hall and the steps leading to it acheived more recent fame in the philosopher's stone...and its amazing how many tour guides you hear say 'yes...this is where they shot harry potter'...oh my. but how can i judge when i stood on the same steps and took a photo of the dining hall! LOVE IT.

what i saw...

what mcgonagall saw

another cool thing to note is the door near the steps that has 'no peel' studded into it. many stories abound but the school says that this was in protest of robert peel, a christ church man, who in 1829 dared to propose greater freedom for catholics. oh my.

the cathedral also is full of interesting pieces but my faves were the jonah window :) and the shrine of st. frideswide. the shrine was smashed to bits on henry's orders when he destroyed the monasteries in 1538 but 350 years later, the fragments were found down a well and pieced together. so shove it down your throat henry (clearly, i don't like the guy).

but enough about the schools - there's more to oxford than that! we saw the bodleian library, the sheldonian theatre, trinity college, radcliffe camera, st. mary the virgin church, st. mary magdalen church....sigh...and so many more colleges.

but of course, we ate as well :)

we had cream tea (well, a coffee for me) at the grande cafe, supposedly the first coffee house in england. and then dinner (finally, a beef wellington) at the oxford retreat. this time on the ride home, i truly was comatose. and again, a stunning weekend that propels me to a mere 3.5 weeks until i move home. freaks me out every time i think about it.

grand cafe

to see all the pics in their glory, visit my photo album.