David dropped me off to locate them
and he found a place to park. Mike met me in the corridor between the parking lot and the terminal with "We come from France." Anyone who has either seen the movie Coneheads or better yet has heard the story of Company C at Antietam realizes the joke there. They had no problems with their new flight arrangements except to realize that they were not going to have time to see any of France in their lay-over time. So to prove they'd been in France, Antina snapped this shot of the Concord. Luckily they had not been waiting long in Bristol and so we loaded them up - told them the revised plan - and headed out.Since the gentlemen had little interest in seeing the Costume Museum and that was the item in Bath that closes early, they determined they were going to head to Bonapart's Miniatures to look at the painted figures for sale while Antina and I toured the Costume Museum. After wandering hither and yon in Bath for a bit, David got his bearings and got us to the Costume Museum and we parted company from the gentlemen for the respective sites to see.
The Costume Museum was running a special exhbition on Marilynn Monroe (or rather the designer who made most of her clothes) and so we had to go through that before they would let us at the older clothing in the museum. But no worries, the exhibition was interesting as it included not only the dresses but also their design sketches, where we might have seen them, etc. One of the dresses even still had some black marks from where she brushed up against a car tire inadvertently. Unfortunately, pictures are not allowed in special exhbits.
Audio tour in hand, we had 30-45 minutes to make it through the museum and the gift shop - whew! I fished out my camera since I'm always looking to upgrade my pictures taken previously and off we went. While we found some of the more modern clothing interesting we skipped past much of it due to time constraints. While we were just inside the museum itself the guys called to say that Bonapart's was closed and they were going to join us in the museum after all since they'd looked through the windows at Bonapart's at the toy soldiers as much as they had dared.
With the extended observation at the BEAUTIFUL 1700's gloves (once again special exhibition) and at some of the 1800's pieces we made some notes:
1. David has decided he wants a new 1700's style doublet and gloves for fencing. And he thinks I can do all the embroidery without a problem. It's lovely, but let's be real. ~smile~
2. Antina wants to learn how to paint voile like the 1860's ball gown we saw.
3. Accessories and shoes area needs labels since we didn't know which pieces went to which era for sure and they had so many nice pieces that would have been lovely to put with gowns.
4. Antina was sure she heard one of her mental transisters blow, although I attribute it to Jet Lag.
5. There just isn't enough in the clothing museum to interest the guys for very long. More men's clothing would be needed. Hmmm, I'll have to keep that in mind if/when I contact them to see if I can see pretties up close and personal for research. I'm sure they have men's things but probably don't display them figuring their audience for the mostly female variety.
With that, we tripped up to the gift shop where Antina noted there was some excellent reference material available for purchase. Some of that material stuck to both Antina and my hands and so it got to come home with us. As they shoed us out of the museum we happily noted that we had several hours and some daylight to get us to our remaining stops. So off to the Roman Baths!
We wound our way back through Bath and came across the Bath Cathedral very easily.
Photos taken, we headed into the surprisingly long que (line) for the Baths. David ducked around someone since we'd previously purchased our tickets at the Costume Museum but that person didn't provide an option for the rest of us to sneak through. While we waited one of the clerks became slightly frustrated that we were extending the que when we already had our tickets (she was joking of course) but that got us around the rest of the crowd to start our tour.
I was happy to note that the upper terrace was open today as it provides lovely viewpoints of both the Baths as well as the Cathedral.
Having been travelling for several hours, our guests thought the Baths looked inviting but resisted the urge to dip into them. Instead they settled for having a picture taken and taking several pictures throughout this unique exhibit.
Antina even managed to get a picture of David and I although David was a little reluctant and attempted escape before the picture could be taken.
As we went through, we awed at the technology, ingenuity and care that the Roman's evidently put into their architecture. Antina noted that while her and Mike had been over in 2007, the Roman Baths was their first time seeing true Roman Architecture.
Having lingered briefly in the gift shop and noting that we were loosing daylight for our last stop, we headed for the vehicle to put Bath behind us.
Lansdown Hill Battlefield was the next stop. This was a stop that Mike wanted due to the fact that they had seen it in the total darkness in 2007 and he knew they were missing something including the look at the terrain for this battle.
The boys put up with some posing so that we could get the "before daylight" versus "after daylight" effect
With the 2008 commemorative photos saved, we decided to skip the t-shirt and just take a look around. Daylight did provide a much more illuminated picture. . . including a monument that had been previously missed.
As dusk started falling quickly and our modified agenda for the day complete, we found ourselves ravenously hungry . . well, no wonder it was getting towards 8 pm. Off to Tobey's Carvery for all the good stuff, including dessert. As we filled our tummies and savored delicious desserts we started planning the next day and confirming the planned agenda.
Finally, homeward bound, the Pennocks got the LIVE versus WEB CAM tour of the Vance Abode. They rated the WEBCAM tour at a 6 while the LIVE tour rated a 9.
Exhausted, we all turned in for the night.
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Slideshow of pictures from Costume Museum
Slideshow of pictures from Roman Baths
Slideshow of pictures from Lansdown (including 2007 pictures)
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