Bath Abbey and Food Shopping

Today started out kind of unexcitingly-- two more diagnostic exams (at least one was on a Ulysses excerpt!).  Things started looking up, however, when we went out for pasties for lunch, and sat in the new shopping center square, where a dj was playing songs to advertise the opening of a new department store (and there were jugglers on stilts!):

We then went into the new store, which looked like a Bloomingdales but had cheaper (but classy looking) things.  We tried on fabulous (read: ridiculous) hairpieces (with feathers!), which was a whole lot of fun.

Then I went on a walk along the side of the River Avon with a friend, and took some lovely pictures of the bridges, park (the fancy one that you have to pay to get into, to keep out the "rabble"), and a few buildings.

Then we went to Bath Abbey, the huge church which dominates the city center's skyline, for tea, cakes, and a tour.  The church is absolutely beautiful, and has a really cool history as well.
 

Bath Abbey from the outside-- it was HUGE.

The Abbey is 500 years old (and this is the newest version-- there were two before it on the same site).  It was designed to be the most beautiful church in the country, so they spent a ridiculous amount of money on...

Fan Vaulting!

And...

A

A ginourmous pipe organ!

It also had spectacular stained glass windows everywhere-- these were post-war, due to the originals having been blown out by a German bombing campaign that targeted World Heritage sites; ie, the city of Bath.

There were lots of other fun surprises in the Abbey, such as finding an old American flag hanging in the church from when Bath was used as a planning center by the British and American navies in preparation for the D-day landings, and a small carving of G-d's name in Hebrew along an inconspicuous door (by a monk who was apparently a fan of Hebrew).  Oh, but the best was discovering that there were 4,000 people buried beneath the church floor (including a former US Senator)!

So anyway: lots of cool stuff in the Abbey.

Right outside of the Abbey are the Pump Rooms-- the entrance to the hot springs that Bath has always been so famous for.  I haven't gone in yet (costs ten pounds...and unfortunately not in weight, but you know, money), but I took some pictures of the outside.

And then...we went food shopping!  We went to the little Sainsbury's in the city center (that's a half-hour walk from my house, by the way), and picked up a few things to last us through the week.  The food prices here are surprisingly good, and there are some interesting new things that I've tried here that are really tasty (don't even get me started on the pasties....I've literally had one for lunch three days in a row).  Then we had to carry the groceries back up the hill-- I'm fairly sure that the trip back from the store might burn all of the calories that I'm carrying with me!

A few of us then went over to one of the other houses to play Bananagrams after dinner, and we stayed there talking for a good while (thankfully, I had my male friend with me, so I felt much safer walking home through the city later at night).

More to report later (this post is actually a day late, this all happened yesterday for me, but I was way too tired to finish the post last night)!

Cheers!