Reading this week:

• My Second Journey Through Equatorial Africa by Hermann von Wissman

We alighted from the train station in Bath and were instantly enamored. How does it keep all this Georgian architecture intact? We had arrived in the morning, much before check-in time at the hotel, but they nonetheless were kind enough to store our bags so we were off to priority #1: the Jane Austen Center!

The Center, or Centre, is a museum dedicated to Jane Austen with its home in a house down the road from where Jane Austen lived alongside her mother and sister after her father died. It is a fun place and works to give you a good insight into the Regency setting of Austen’s novels. You start the tour with a lecture from one of Austen’s characters, in our case Emma from Emma, who was great. I learned a lot of interesting stuff on the tour, like the fact that there is no real contemporary portraits of Jane Austen. I was very hurt on her sister’s behalf however, because at one point Jane’s sister Cassandra painted a watercolor of Jane, but as soon as they tell you that they go on and on about how terrible of a painting it is and like, come on. Be nice. Sorry she didn’t have a camera.

From there we wandered Bath for a bit. The Regency atmosphere we just learned about in the Jane Austen Center was heightened by the fact we were visiting Bath in the midst of the Jane Austen Festival. We didn’t attend any of the Jane Austen-specific events, but what it did mean is that we would be in a restaurant and at the next table over would be a couple in full Regency dress, which was a delight. Another highlight of our wanderings was Persephone Books, which is based out of Bath. They specialize in neglected books by (mostly) women and besides being a very good concept for a shop is just also a very nice shop. Be sure to stop by.

But enough dilly-dallying, on to the main event: the Baths! The Roman Baths, specifically, the reason the town is named Bath. But you knew that. This was a significantly better museum and experience than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be hokey and it has a bit of a hokey veneer but is in fact quite in-depth. We were on a guided tour but they tell you to show up an hour early, and we did, and that is actually a good idea. The guided tour and self-guided tour are different experiences so it is worth it to make time for both.

On the un-guided tour you of course walk around the complex. You start on the terrace of the baths and eventually descend to bath-level, which is now below ground. The baths themselves do not look too relaxing these days. Because they are open-air and the water is at a perfect petri-dish temperature, they are full of algae and green. They do clean them occasionally but we were on the tail-end of a cleaning cycle. Back in the day the baths would have had a roof which would have kept the pool much more pool-looking. But after admiring the baths then you wind through the museum, which was really fascinating.

The museum really works to paint the long, long history of the site. Before the Romans showed up in 43 and built a big ole’ temple/spa complex on top, the hot springs had long been a pilgrimage site for the peoples of Britain. Which means that the museum has all sorts of artifacts from the Roman and pre-Roman eras. The second coolest thing they have in there are pre-Roman coins which I think is fantastic just because it is a glimpse into a whole strange and alien civilization. Plus some of the coins had boats on them. But that of course leaves the coolest thing, which had to be the only words in British Celtic known to survive anywhere. One of the uses for the springs was cursing people, and you could write your curse on a lead tablet and fold it up and toss it into the waters for the gods to take care of. They have in the collection one of these curse tablets written with Latin letters but in British Celtic. They don’t know what it means, because this is the only surviving record of the language and like, imagine that person. Speaking Celtic, but a) knows Latin and b) has a beef with someone they want the Gods to take care of. That is a person who bridged worlds.

At the designated time we met our guide and compatriots for the guided tour, which focused a lot more on the archeology of the baths. Like the Globe, there are chunks of the baths that they can’t do much archeology on because the buildings on top of the baths are also historical. Oh well. But our guide was deeply knowledgeable and really loved the site and really tried to let us see the site through his eyes. Like at one point on the floor there are indentations apparently where the oyster bar used to be (common bath snack doncha know), and he explained these were from generations of people clamoring for oysters as they enjoyed the holy and very relaxing waters. At the end of the tour there is a fountain of Bath water which you can sample (but direct from the spring of course, not the green stuff). Our guide said he drank it every day and it kept him fit and healthy. I thought it was fine-tasting but my super amazing wife didn’t like it. The highlight of the gift shop was me saving the day by nabbing a small dog that had escaped from its owners and was evading them in the store. Fun stuff!

After the baths and a bit more walking, dinner was Sally Lunn’s very historical bunns. That was a lovely meal orchestrated by two women who were absolutely running trying to keep up with the dinner service. Sally Lunn’s also has a museum but it was closed by the time we finished dinner, so it was finally time to retire to our hotel room, which my super amazing wife was delighted to discover included a bathtub.

After I had run through my three boxes of archives it was time to rendezvous with my super amazing wife, who had entertained herself rather than watch me go through boxes of old records. Lunch under our belt we detoured to things more squarely in her realm of interests, in this case tea and Shakespeare. After a brief stop at Twinings tea where she took advantage of their 3-for-2 deal, we head for the first time across the Thames to south London to make the pilgrimage to Shakespeare’s Globe.

This was not actually my first visit to the Globe. Back in middle school my family did a house exchange in Scotland, except dad figured out that it was cheaper to book a package deal with a week in London than to just book the airline tickets by themselves, so this whole trip was over my old stomping grounds. I don’t think having viewed these places as a preteen and then as a 30-something provides any particular insights. My biggest surprise upon revisiting the Globe was that although I knew it was a recreation (albeit on a somewhat smaller scale), I didn’t realize it had been built only in 1997, so when I visited it last it was like, new. Though my biggest memory was that they did not have any lapel pins in the gift shop back then, so I had to go with a pin-back button, the kind of move I would mostly refuse to make these days, because the other difference between me as a 30-something and me as a preteen is that now I have standards by golly.

On this visit to the Globe we took the guided walking tour, which was very good. It started off in their little museum there in the basement. It is pretty good and especially with the guide it gives you a good grounding in why the theater was where it was and what sorts of entertainments they were putting on and how. The big competition around there for eyeballs was bear-baiting which is just like, those poor bears and those poor dogs. But after the museum we went out into South London to let the guide paint for us the Elizabethan world on the backdrop of the modern world. Besides pointing out where all the bear-baiting was happening (one of the spots is like a nice-looking seafood place now, history is wild), you also got to learn about ferrymen, and the local brewspots that were there were breweries for centuries and centuries. They also showed you the original spot where the Globe was, except they can’t do much archeology on it because a large chunk of the spot is covered with a newer building, but not a “new” building because that building is also historical and they can’t modify it or take it down at all to take a look at the Globe. Man must be wild to be a country with so many layers of the sort of history that leaves brick walls, specifically.

The tour ended at the gift shop, where I was distressed to learn that although they now have lapel pins, none of them said “Globe Theater” (I try to ensure my lapel pins say the name of the place I got them from), so I had to go with a cat holding a skull instead. You all will have to remind me where it is from. But with that bit of Elizabethan atmosphere absorbed, we head back across the river. There we took in some of our last sights of London, including fun things like Roman wharf timber and remaining bits of the Old London Bridge (conveniently both are in the same spot). It was important to absorb these things because the next morning we were off to the next big city of our vacation. So we tubed back to the hotel, had a good night’s sleep, woke up early, schlepped our too big suitcases through a couple of Tube stations not designed for too-big-suitcase-schlepping, and eventually arriving at Paddington. I had time to grab a sausage roll before we caught our train, which was a very nice ride. I was stunned to see we were going at over 110 miles per hour, but I suppose that sort of thing was just normal around there. But all the better because we were excited to finally arrive in the city of Jane Austen’s dreams: Bath.

Of the various museums we were going to go to on this trip, the one we were perhaps both the most excited for was the Victoria & Albert Museum, or the V&A for those who are into abbreviations. It’s an art and design museum, you see, and art and design are some of our most favorite things. Having decided you can’t have too much of a good thing we went once again to Café Tropea for breakfast and then had our first tube adventure. This was fun and easy and we just used our credit cards which is a technology our American minds could not comprehend and we took a straight shot on the Piccadilly Line and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we didn’t even need to go above ground to access the V&A, we could just take a tunnel and pop out into the basement. Fun!

Tell you what man we were excited for the V&A and it lived up to the hype. My super amazing wife had done her reading more than I had and so was aware of the Cast Courts. These are wild. So the theory was that it is hard to go see say Michelangelo’s David in person and so what they did was bring David to you (provided you are in London) in the form of a plaster cast. They went into a lot of effort to do a good job on these casts and also used other reproduction methods, and a chunk of the exhibition was just about different reproduction techniques. The Cast Courts themselves were built around the dimensions needed for the largest casts, those of Trajan’s Column, which lemme tell ya, are HUGE. Since my super amazing wife was familiar with the Cast Courts we went there first, and since I am such a hound for showing up to museums early we were there before nearly anyone else, so here we were in these cavernous rooms just chock-a-block of the world’s finest sculptural works squeezed together for an admiring public which consisted of just us. It was revival architecture but for interior decorating. My kind of style really, but I nearly lost my super amazing wife somewhere between the Portico de la Gloria and the Tomb of St Peter Martyr. We were off to a great start at the museum.

Look from here I will simply have to recreate the experience of going through the rest of the V&A, which was just absorbing like body blows of beautiful object after beautiful object by telling you about them one after another, relentlessly, making you jealous, like I was, that there is so much beauty in the world and yet we have only a limited time in order to perceive it. In the guts of the museum itself our first stop after the Cast Courts was the extensive jewelry collection. We had wanted to see some particular pieces, and we did, but why limit yourself to one when they have thousands of pieces spanning millennia. After that we just stumbled upon a hall full of tapestries, and like, we like textile arts, we have to go see the tapestries. We are here to see the tapestries! I couldn’t stop saying that in my head. But here are these works of art, gigantic, 500 years old, how did they do that, what luxury to decorate your house with such things just to keep out the drafts. From there we just blast through the theater and arts section, catching glimpses of Dua Lipa’s Mugler bodysuit alongside Stormtrooper armor alongside the biggest celebrity they have to have had, the costume worn by Manuel in Fawlty Towers, yes, Manuel! Manuel from Fawlty Towers, one of the greatest British TV shows of all time (though I can’t even watch The IT Crowd it is too funny), they had that sucker just on display in a corner, now we are going through a whole section from William Morris of the Arts and Craft Movement, which is another highlight that my super amazing wife really wanted to see, but on the way there you have to stop by the particularly famous bed, and now we are very nearly lost and also hungry, but we manage to find the café, itself just a gorgeous environment, surrounded by Victorian-era tile which in itself is a delight to the senses but also we were eating some rather good salmon, alright back at it, gotta view the fashion special exhibit, I liked it all, it was all super great, up and at ‘em through another hallway, what is that chair, it has to be modern, it is so chic and sleek and minimalist, but no, it is Victorian, how did they even know to do that back then, you have to explain it to me, wait there is no time, now we are in an entire hallway, an entire hallway! of ironwork, wrought and cast and bent and shaped which we admire because my dad is a blacksmith and we want to find things he would like, and there are so many things, it is too much, my heart can’t take it anymore, we gotta get out of here and we stumble out into the sun instead of going back through the tunnel to the tube because by then we needed the cleansing rays of daylight to let it all wash over us. It is a really fantastic museum, you should definitely go.

Reading this week:

• How Did the Great Bear Originate?, Translated by Damdinsurengyn Altangerel, andedited by Professor Choi. Luvsanjav and Dr. Robert Travers

Our first full day in London dawned bright and early and to start it off right we got a full English, almost. For breakfast we had landed at the very cute Caffè Tropea, which has a trademarked (so they claim) breakfast called “The Anglo-Italian Job” which was really good, and just a full English breakfast but with Italian-sounding meats. Fortified, we got the next full English experience: The British Museum.

Because of other bits of our schedule this was a flying visit to the museum so we were really only there for the highlights. They keep the highlights conveniently close to the door though which is thoughtful. A quick left brought us to the Rosetta Stone where we oohed and aahed. The crowds weren’t quite what I hear they are for the Mona Lisa but I felt like the vibe was similar. The Rosetta Stone is larger than the Mona Lisa though and you can also see the back. Passing around the crown brings you almost directly to the Parthenon Marbles, where I showed off some podcast-acquired knowledge to my super amazing wife.

The main advantage of seeing the Parthenon Marbles though is that in the short corridor between the Rosetta Stone and the Marbles is the entrance to the Assyrian section which neither of us expected. I was at least passingly familiar with Assyrian works from reading Gods, Graves and Scholars, but the real treat was introducing it all to my super amazing wife who wasn’t familiar at all with what these cool cats did. And by cool cats I mean the various lions depicted in all the carvings of lion hunts with details so intricate and lively that we were both extremely taken with them. Much like the British, who took them. This is a zing that will serve to cover everything about the British Museum, but man it is such a privilege to be able to see this stuff, a privilege that the whole world should have without having to suffer through Heathrow losing your luggage.

The major major major highlight for me was of course the Africa section, which I was somewhat distressed to learn was in the basement. On the way we passed Hoa Hakananai’a. I had thought the museum would have their samples of Rongorongo on display, but I was disappointed. I had to console myself with the phenomenal (and morally acquired) artwork they had on display. My super amazing wife was impressed by Tree of Life, a sculpture made out of pieces of rifles from Mozambique. Meanwhile I spent a large chunk of time admiring two Moko Jumbie figures commissioned by the museum from Zak Ové. I was really drawn in by the otherworldliness created by their wings before noticing how the use of new materials (like sneakers) manages to create an old-world object. And then finally in the commissioned artwork genre is “Knowledge is Sweeter than Honey” by Susan Hefuna, a really beautiful way to inscribe additional meaning onto the gorgeous carved screens the likes of which we saw in Andalusia and Morocco.

Of the non-commissioned art, there was so much packed into a relatively small gallery. Their textiles display was thorough, with all sorts of different types on display. Of interest were also carved wooden printing blocks, used for printing on fabrics. My super amazing wife, in addition to the textiles, was drawn to the towering display of pots, while I was checking out all the different products of blacksmithing. This included a set of traditional bellows and about as many different ceremonial knives as I could possibly imagine being all in one place. And a hand plow, which I hadn’t seen before.

They really pack it in there man. Sadly though like I said this was a flying visit so soon after this we were off, only taking time to marvel at possibly the world’s greatest kava bowl (from Hawaii).

Although the rest of our day would largely bore you we did at one point drop on into The National Gallery (I was going to make a joke about the real National Gallery but I don’t appear to have ever written about visiting, maybe I am just not checking thoroughly enough, I’ve definitely been) where I was wowed by how impressively restored some of the artworks were, with color and vitality despite being 600 years old, but I didn’t take any pictures or write down what those works were so you’ll just have to take my word for it. But the best part of that whole experience was of course seeing Trafalgar Square, because who doesn’t love Nelson (I mean maybe the French and Spanish?) but here is me trying to be him, though with more arms:

Loyal readers, my super amazing wife and I have been on another vacation so as I am sure you are all overjoyed to hear that means you all get another set of lengthy writeups about our various adventures on said vacation. This one should be good though; it was a lot of fun for us and therefore I am sure it will be a lot of fun for you to read about.

Our destination this time was the UK, more specifically London and Bath and then swaths of Scotland before ending up in Shetland for Shetland Wool Week. But first we had to get to the UK, which went largely pretty smooth except that the airline misplaced my super amazing wife’s suitcase for a while. This meant she was wearing my socks and sweatpants the first day, but I do that every day so it must not be so bad. They eventually delivered the bag to our hotel a day later, which like, I think the traffic can get bad in London but it’s not that bad.

Anyway we had arrived in the morning after an overnight flight, which meant that we were dazed, confused, and not necessarily in our own clothes as we set out into the bright London afternoon (the weather was stunningly good the whole time we were in the UK, though almost everywhere we went people were telling us how bad it had been just a week before, so we had good timing). After fortifying ourselves with lunch (Chinese food, very culturally appropriate for the UK I know) we arrived at our very first destination: Novelty Automation.

For those poor souls not in the know, Novelty Automation is the project of the engineer and artist Tim Hunkin. I learned of the esteemed Mr. Hunkin via his YouTube channel, where he has a series of videos sharing his practical engineering knowledge, which he applies to (among other things) making the arcade machines which populate his arcade. I tried to explain this all to my super amazing wife to justify dragging her to an obscure street in London (conveniently close to the hotel though which is why we went there first), but she didn’t get it until we walked in the door.

But once we got in there I think she was sold. It is a cramped, tiny little alcove of a shop but tons of fun. It was crowded when we got there (like eight or ten people inside) but I got us some tokens and we started playing games. Since I had seen the videos it was like meeting celebrities in real life. Right inside the door was the game that my super amazing wife was most enamored with. She is, as discussed many many times here, a big fan of sheep, so she had to have a go at Pet or Meat. We got pet! In retrospect I’m not sure which one she would have preferred. Meanwhile I played The Fulfilment Center and won a zero-hours contract, and My Nuke, where my extensive nuclear training did not come in handy and I dropped several fuel pellets and as a reward got some nuclear waste. Overall the arcade was super fun and I would totally host a birthday party there, which they note is one of the services they provide.

Our time at Novelty Automation concluded our only real big destination on the first day. A big part of the reason we were in the UK and London was honestly to shop and so we spent the rest of the afternoon zooming around to the different sorts of shops we wanted to go to. But not like high end luxury shops mind you, no no, our tastes were niche. I mean not that niche, it was tea and books, two notably popular things. But we were looking at special teas and special books. Destinations included Mariage Frères, which I thought was fine, and Postcard Teas, which I now note bills itself as London’s Finest Tea Store and might just be. It is small but they were very knowledgeable and passionate; while we were there the man behind the counter asked a Chinese lady where she was from and then they talked extensively of the various tea regions around there off the top of his head. We also wandered into TWG Tea at some point because we thought it was Twinings (which we went to another day) but you can give TWG a pass.

As for books our first destination was Cecil Court. My dream in London was that I was going to go to an antiquarian bookstore and then just find all sorts of London Missionary Society books and ephemera for (relatively) cheap because London is where the Missionary Society is from and various people from previous generations would have had their libraries liquidated and people just wouldn’t know what they had but with my extensive knowledge I could pick it all up at cut-rate prices and have the world’s finest LMS library but this did not happen. I was a bit disappointed with the antiquarian book selection overall (this could be my fault I admit) and Cecil Court didn’t seem to have that many bookstores frankly. Though I did pick up a book from Tenderbooks, they were a great little shop. To be completionist we also went to the big Waterstones which was you know a bookstore and then also Hatchards which was pretty nice.

By this point it was late in the day and our feet was killing us so we went on back to the hotel, detouring only slightly to see one final celebrity: