Friday, April 9, 2010

Tube Disruptions & Bath, Take 3 of 4

Today marked my third visit to Bath, and the occasion was to see Danielle, who was visiting from France. Getting there was an adventure though.

Lately I’ve had a habit of running into delays on the Central Line of the London Underground. First it was someone pulling the emergency alarm on my train causing us to sit in Oxford Circus station for a good 10 minutes in a crowded tube train with closed doors. Then the next day, there was a signal failure farther down the line, so they had to terminate some trains earlier in the route. And guess which train they picked? Yep, it was mine.

Then on the day of my trip to Bath, there were delays on the Central line, which because of construction was the only line serving Mile End. After waiting for a while to see if a train was going to leave soon, I decided to take a bus to Liverpool Street Station where I could get a Hammersmith & City train to Paddington. When we finally arrived at Paddington, I ran to the ticket machine to print my ticket. I then read the departures board, couldn’t find my train, so I had to guess which platform it was. Since I had taken this route before, I knew what type of train to look for. I picked one, ran through the gate onto the platform and asked the station agent if this was the train to Bath. It was. I hopped on and turned around to see the door closing. Before I found my seat, the train was moving. I then looked at my tickets and they were printed at 10:01. My train was a 10:03 train.

After arriving in Bath, I met up with Terry and I grabbed a quick bite to eat since I had planned to get something at the train station in London. Then we met up with Annie, Danielle and Christine and hung out at Annie’s flat until it was time to head over to the Pump Room for afternoon tea. The Pump Room is a restaurant attached to the Roman Baths and is a rather posh place to go. They even had a live string quartet and piano.

There was someone, however, there with light up bunny ears since it was Easter. And some one who looked a lot like Alan Rickman from Love Actually. But tea was fantastic and the sandwiches and scones that came with it were great.

They also had water from the spring that feeds the baths for sale, so we got a glass for the table. It wasn’t very good due to a metallic aftertaste. If you ever get to try it, have it cold. When it’s room temperature, the metallic taste is even stronger.

Then we walked around Bath a bit to show Danielle the city, including the Circus and the Royal Crescent. We also found a pub I want to eat at the next time I’m in Bath, just because of the name.

That was it for this trip to Bath, and it looks like I will be making one more trip to Bath, but not until mid-May.

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