Stonehenge and Bath and Being a Tourist

Cheryl and I have spent two days floating in baths in Bath.   We have been laughing outrageously, I have been coughing obnoxiously, and we have both been indulging ourselves ostentatiously.  This is great.

But let me back up.  I wanted to see Stonehenge, so we made a stop there on the way from Heathrow to Bath.  I learned a lot (good) I saw many many fellow gawkers (bad).  I felt embarrassed there.  I felt ridiculous and naive that I thought I would feel something there that I hadn't felt before.

Unlike the Dolmans and Faerie circles and standing stones we saw in Ireland, all of which just sit in fields with sheep and stone fences and rocky hills, Stonehenge is bordered with an asphalt path, has a souvenir shop, has a major highway running to it, and is blanketed with tourists, many of them teenage gigglers.  As an experience, it was more splash of the cold water of commerce and commercialization, and of mass media creation of a destination.  As an amazing artifact of unclear origin or purpose, I did learn quite a bit from our guide, Nick, and our drive through the area about the various features of a henge, the hillocks and the ditches, that provided enough historical mystery for the day.

But how to see these famous places without feeling like a cruiser through the experience?  I think the time ahead in England is going to be a lot of this, with museums and historical landmarks ahead.  In Norway I had little interest in seeing specific things, rather, I had a keen desire for the landscape, the sky, and the sound of the language.  I could take a thousand photos, and chances are my photos for the most part would NOT be like everyone else's, because they were more about a way I saw things than the things themselves.  When I held up my camera to Stonehenge, I felt ridiculous.  Buy a postcard.  How will it be standing before St. Paul's, Big Ben, the Tower of London, or in the museums?  I am not EVEN going to go see Westminster Palace....

We arrived in Bath at the golden hour, and Nick took us to a park overlooking the city.  He earned his pay with that one stop.  Bath is, quite simply, gorgeous.  Most of the buildings are made of the buttery colored local limestone, and the city from that vantage point seems to ripple into the hills in waves of buildings, with a river (or canal; I couldn't keep them straight) winding through the heart of things. To get to the park we drove through narrow streets named after poets, and I had my first experience of "Milton may well have brought his failing eyes here.  Wordsworth may indeed have taken a cure here on his way to Tintern Abbey," and it was thrilling seeing those streetsigns for those possibilities.  Much is made of Jane Austen's connection to Bath, but it was a destination for those who were able for centuries.

Then Nick pointed out Solisbury Hill, and I couldn't get the damned Peter Gabriel song out of my head for days:

I did not believe the information
I just had to trust imagination
my heart going boom, boom, boom

We wandered around Bath much of the next day before our appointment at the spa.  Yes, Shari spent many hours at the spa, in an fing swimsuit, her hairy legs out for the world to see.  And stare they did, I might add.  The water was delicious.  I don't mean I drank it, but it had a kind of lightness to it.  It seemed it was easier to float than in a lake or a regular pool, and it was pleasantly warm.  The spa also has saunas spewing heat and different essences, and that humidity gave my cough considerable relief.  But it was floating in the water for a couple of hours that seemed to just even me out.

I also had a treatment at the spa called watsu.  Ok, no kidding.  You get in a bath and a woman swishes you around in the water, performing shiatsu while you are in the water.  Yep, I get it.  Back to the womb.  Now I understand why all the Freudians think that's where we all want to get to.  If that's what the womb was like, it was GOOD, my friends. 


Of course I coughed terribly three times and had to stop the treatment to catch my breath.


The spa was so good, we went back for more today.  We spent about four hours floating around, then had a hot dumpling massage.  Cheryl's was great, but mine was pleasant because of the scents and the sensations, but as a massage or as a therapy is was pretty perfunctory.  I could almost see the script in front of my therapist--now we say this, now we plop this dumpling down, now we plop this one, now we ring the bell, now we sell stuff.  I was not exactly upset by this; it was a pleasant experience, but it had the feel of a gimmick.

Unlike the shiatsu in the water with floaties on my legs, of course.