So many puns available I couldn't decide on a title

Whilst exploring this dark, damp island people call Britain, there are some things you just have to do. Bath is one of those places - according to one tour book, it's the single best city to explore outside of London. Since the Gates Scholars are full of intrepid foreigners eager to have an 'authentic' British experience but not look too much like tourists, a group of us took a charter bus to see this very old city whose hygenic implements go back a millenium before the battle of Hastings.

But on the way, we ran into another must-see British tourist attraction: a very large pile of rocks.

A lovely shot of us in front of...HEY, THAT'S NOT LAURA!!!

Apparently there are many such 'henges' around Britain, but this one grabs all the attention. Despite our (successful) efforts to convince my friend Victor that the rocks were shipped in boats from Australia, the actual technology used to erect these large rocks is fairly impressive, (moreso if you're an early neolithic cave dweller whose main use of mathematics involves the most efficient way to club your next meal or future wife and drag it/her into your bachelor pad). I've seen it now, and I bet the rocks will still be there in another few thousand years.

It just looks like we're jumping high because the rocks are so small.

Bath, meanwhile, is a lovely city, once you get over the confusion about how to pronounce a common American word which is also an English place; how long do you really want that vowel to be? If you're like me, your main impression of Bath comes from Jane Austen novels in which the wealthy people are always making trips there for their complexion or something while the young poor protagonist feels awkwardly out of place, not to mention the inevitable worrying over whether [standoffish male love interest] really likes her or if the family's reputation will be damaged by [naive female relative's] dangerous liason with [roguish military officer who's really no good for her].

I managed to catch Jane for a photo-op while she was contemplating the social plight of 19th Century lower-class English ingenues...she keeps pretty busy like that.

If you hadn't guessed, Bath is named for the Roman baths which were built during the Roman rule of Britain 2000 years ago. The Romans took their bathing seriously - supposedly a non-Roman asked the Roman commander at Bath how often he bathed, and he was ashamed that his duties only allowed him time to bath once per day. (It was because the barbarians saved so much time by not bathing that they decided to take up other hobbies, like undermining the Roman Empire, and yoga).

The audio tour took so long, the water turned green...

The baths are quite a site - the bath part used to have a covered roof but is now outside, and the outside section is now under a roof, so you have to use your imagination a bit. There are some lovely sound-only exhibits where you can hear a goat being slaughtered so an augerer can read your fortune from its entrails. Also, instead of a wishing well, they had a cursing well, where you could carve nasty things about someone on a coin and throw it in (don't say what you cursed for, though, or it won't come true!). Ah, Rome. Right on plumbing, but they had some more progress to make in fortune-telling and curse-selling.

Bath also has beautiful architecture from a more recent period. The city's status as a resort for the rich led to many architects designing master works for the elites who lived or vacationed here. Among these are the King's Circus and the Royal Crescent, where architect John Wood (no relation to the Community College) showed the unique beauty of curves instead of corners. The Royal Crescent in particular is quite striking, with a lovely vista of the rest of the city in the valley, with green hills on the other side. The rich people living in the crescent tried not to be too upset with us foreigners taking in their view.

If I had a skateboard, this would be an awesome grind.

And we went to pubs and Indian restaurants, and the food was good if not overly healthy. But that pretty much goes without saying at this point.

Final Score: 7.5/10.0

Switzerland, Part Deux/Zwei/Due

So my uncle Mark decided to visit Europe while he had two nephews there. Unfortunately for those of us in England, he speaks German so well that he didn't want to bother with any countries that speak English, and thus he stayed with Zack instead of us (NOTE: the sarcasm in the last sentence would be apparent if you could hear my tone of voice or if you knew my uncle Mark. I think he just stayed with Zack because Zack has a car).

At any rate, Laura and I went to meet them by flying into Basel, a city on the corner of France, Germany, and Switzerland. After waiting in line for Swiss customs, Zack texted me to come out on the French side instead, so we rapidly shifted countries and got our passports stamped. Then we met Zack and Uncle Mark and drove to Switzerland in about 5 minutes (apparently parking is easier on the French side).

Alp-gazing

We had a similar experience to the last time in the Lauterbrunnen area, driving into what was apparently a beautiful mountain valley but not being able to see mountains until the morning.

My uncle, despite being a bonafide Midwesterner and resident of Nebo, IL, spent many many summers of his life in Colorado, climbing up mountains and rescuing wayward children. So he's always loved mountains, and was very excited to see the Alps. He was thus overjoyed when we stepped out of the chalet where we were staying on the first morning and saw....part of a mountain. It was pretty cloudy.

We decided to hope it wouldn't rain, and went for a hike up the side of the valley. We made it to a
small mountain micro-village that seemed to be closed for the off-season, such that it seemed eerily like an old western ghost town.

It's quiet...a little too quiet.

Going a bit further, we found a mountain stream whose bridge had been taken down, probably to keep travelers from getting hurt by going farther in the winter. Naturally we instead found various ways to jump across the stream, nearly slipping on ice in the process. You just can't contain the exploration instinct.

We climbed up farther, just above the snowline, and had a very brief snowball fight (it didn't get too intense, as we sensed the possibility of slipping, falling, and dying, for which our mothers would never forgive us). But it was extremely beautiful, and only renewed our desire to start a bakery in Colorado. One of these days...

We climbed so high that Zack was beheaded by the troposphere. Or the edge of the camera.

We also visited the lovely mountain town of Grindelwald, though as semi-educated Americans we couldn't really get past the Harry Potter associations.

So that's where he was hiding!

Laura finds the Eldar Wand

The next day we went to Lucerne, which is also a beautiful city set up in the mountains with lakes all around it. I saw the lakes and the beautiful city, but by this time the clouds were obscuring nearly all the mountains. But although I could sense that on a clear summer day, the city would be a different kind of beautiful that I couldn't quite see, the cloudiness added a certain isolated quality that's hard to describe. It was almost like Brigadoon, up in the mountains and separate from everywhere else on Earth.

Jumping on the Creepy Skeleton Bridge

All in all, we didn't have nearly enough time in Lucerne, but we got to walk around the old city walls and the old bridge with creepy paintings of skeletons that represented the black death. Maybe I'll come back there someday and go skiing. Or maybe not - it may seem tautological, but I'm beginning to realize that these places that gain such majesty from their isolation are also very difficult to get to, and are only going to seem more isolated once I'm back in America.

Lucerne (cloudy and cold version): 7.0/10.0