Bath

It was a surprise when a new lockdown in England was announced a few days after we got back from Stockholm. At that point, we thought Claudio would be going back to Chile at the end of November, so I felt quite disappointed that we were going to be locked down for most of the rest of his stay here.

After the government's announcement, we only had a few days left of freedom, so we had to decide which trips to prioritise. One thing was obvious: we needed to go to Bath!

In my opinion, Bath is the most beautiful city in the UK and is a must-see for anyone visiting this country. And what makes it even better is that it takes less than a hour to get there from my house by car or train.

I've been there a few times on shopping trips with my family since I started blogging, and as I've mentioned before, I'd always wanted to write a post about it, but never had the chance to see everything I wanted to see there. However this time, Claudio and I definitely managed to see all the highlights, so I feel like I can write a post that does the city justice! (By the way, I've used a few photos from previous trips in this post.)

One thing I really like about Bath is the view you see as soon as you come out of the train station. Just opposite the exit, you can see the picturesque buildings of the Café au Lait café and the Royal Hotel. The whole area has a very grand and European feel to it, as does much of the rest of the city.

Another great thing about Bath is that it's very compact and easy to get around on foot. It only takes a matter of minutes to get from the station to the centre of the city, where you can find all the main attractions, including the famous Roman Baths museum.

Claudio and I arrived in the centre a while before our reserved slot at the Roman Baths, so we took the opportunity to see some other great sights like Bath Abbey, a huge and very impressive building.

We also walked by the Parade Gardens. You have to pay if you want to actually enter the gardens, but luckily you can still enjoy its great views looking down from the street.

A short distance away is Pulteney Bridge, one of the most famous landmarks in Bath. It was actually used in the Les Misérables movie to represent Paris!

In fact, the whole city is full of picture perfect buildings and streets, which we enjoyed wandering round both before and after our visit to the museum.

Something that really adds to the European vibe of Bath is the fact that there are signs written in French. I'm not sure why that is, but I like it!

At 11 o'clock, it was time for us to finally go inside the Roman Baths! It had actually been around 15 years since the last time I visited, so it was almost like a new experience for me. (My mum used to take us there all the time when we were younger, and she eventually got completely sick of it, which is why I hadn't been for so long!)

The museum is both a fascinating and beautiful place, and you can definitely see why people from all over the world come to visit it. In the Roman era, the city was known as Aquae Sulis, and the baths were part of a temple complex, where people came to worship the goddess Minerva.

The main bath is particularly impressive and really makes you feel like you're in Rome. It almost made up for the fact that we weren't able to go to Italy!

The views of the bath with the abbey in the background are really striking. It's easy to see why the entire city has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The views from the lower floor of the museum aren't bad either!

After we'd explored the museum and had lunch, it was time to see some of Bath's regency architecture. I couldn't remember having visited the iconic Royal Crescent street before (although apparently I had been there many years ago!), so it was one of the main things we both wanted to see.

It's actually a little way out from the rest of the city, but the walk to get there is very scenic. On our way, we ended up in another very beautiful street that was shaped like a circle. I found out later that it's called The Circus and that it's also quite famous.

A short while later we arrived in the Royal Crescent. It was great to finally see it, as it was definitely better in real life than it looked in photos!

I also really liked the row of buildings to the left of the crescent. They reminded me a lot of the apartment buildings you can find in Paris.

While we were there, we saw a cute cat outside one of the houses. All cats are kings and queens, so that must be the reason why the street is called the Royal Crescent!

Afterwards we had time for a nice cup of tea before catching the train back home. Both of us had really enjoyed our day out in Bath; it's such an enchanting city that makes you want to go back again and again. I could definitely imagine living there someday!

Since that trip, we've been quite lucky. One of Claudio's flights back to Chile was cancelled, and now the dates of both flights have been changed, meaning that he's going to be here in the UK until just before Christmas - a month longer than originally planned! This meant we could take a mini-break to another amazing English city last week, and I'll be writing about that in the near future.

But prior to that, we had some nice outdoor outings in my local area around Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. Some shorter posts about those places will be on the way soon...

Stockholm: Day Three

The third day Claudio and I spent in Stockholm was also our last day there, so we needed to make it count! But because we had already ticked off all the places we'd most wanted to see during our first two days, and another place we were interested in was closed, we were able to relax and go with the flow a bit more.

First of all, we decided to go back to Djurgården island (where we'd gone on our second day) and visit another museum there: Nordiska Museet (the Nordic Museum).

We'd seen the building the previous day and had been very impressed by it, as it's like a fairytale castle.

The interior is also very elaborate and has a huge statue of the former king, Gustav Vasa, who looks quite a lot like Henry the Eighth!

During our tour of the museum, we found out that the building was built specifically to be a museum, and that its style comes from Dutch-influenced Danish Renaissance architecture.

The exhibits were also very interesting and taught us a lot about the history and culture of the Nordic countries, with a focus on Sweden. The parts I found most memorable included a recreation of a 1940s Stockholm apartment, an exhibit about the Sámi people, and an exhibit about how Britain influenced Nordic fashion in the 1960s!

Maybe it wasn't quite as exciting and immersive as Skansen, but I'd still consider it to be one of the city's must-visit attractions.

Next we went off in the direction of another museum we wanted to visit. On the way, we saw this fairytale-esque building that I felt compelled to take a photo of. I wasn't sure whether it was a church, a house, or a small castle but I liked it a lot! (I eventually managed to find out later that it was a villa called Jägarhyddan.)

The next museum we'd planned to visit was the ABBA museum, but when we got there, we discovered it would cost the equivalent of about £50 for the two of us to visit! We're not big enough fans of ABBA to be willing to pay that much, so we just looked around the shop and then left. (One of the disadvantages of Scandinavia is that it's certainly an expensive place to spend time in!)

Afterwards we were wondering around, trying to figure out what to do next, when we suddenly came across a ferry terminal. The next boat was leaving in a few minutes time, so we got on board!

The ferries in Stockholm are part of the system of public transport, but we'd heard that they were also a great way of seeing the city. And that definitely turned out to be true! The boat trip was really fun, and it was especially great to see Kastellholmen, a little island with a red castle.

The ferry didn't take us where we'd expected to go; we'd thought it was going to a place called Slussen, but it actually took us to Gamla stan, where we'd been on our first day. That didn't matter though, because we didn't have any particular destination in mind.

After we'd figured out where we were, we decided to walk over to the island of Skeppsholmen to take a closer look at some interesting buildings we'd seen from afar.

The island was quite an unusual place, as it was almost deserted compared to the rest of the city. But it was a very scenic place, and I especially liked the pink building that looked like a castle (Admiralty House). We also had great views across to Gamla stan from there.

After exploring Skeppsholmen, we took the ferry back over to Gamla stan and spent a really nice couple of hours enjoying the sights there for a second time.

Then we made our way back to the central station, passing through one of the main squares of the city, Sergels torg. We'd been past it on the tram in the morning and I'd thought it was quite unattractive, but by night it was all lit up and was really something else.

Part of the square is sunken, and as we walked towards it, something caught our eye; there were hundreds of people there waving Chilean and Mapuche flags!

The day before, the plebiscite for a new constitution had been held in Chile, and the approve vote had won by a landslide. This was why all the Chileans in Stockholm were out celebrating in Sergels torg. 

We joined in the celebration for a little while, and it felt like a very historic occasion. I will definitely remember it for a long time.

It was the perfect end to an amazing few days in Sweden.

The next morning, we had to get up at 3am to go and catch our flight. But thankfully everything went much smoother than it had done on the way there! We were able to take the pendeltåg (commuter train) all the way from the hotel to the airport, which worked out much more convenient and cheaper than taking the Arlanda Express, even though we had to pay a special fee to enter the airport. And we also got through security with no problems!

All in all, we really enjoyed Stockholm, and I'm glad that Claudio had the chance to experience a country other than England during his first trip to Europe. It's a shame we couldn't go to France or Italy, but hopefully we'll have other opportunities in the future. Besides, it was great for both of us to discover Scandinavia, a very interesting part of the world which I hadn't visited before. In the future I'd definitely go back to Sweden again, as well as to other Nordic countries.

In a way, it was strange being in Sweden, as it was like Covid didn't exist there. Life was just going on as normal, and most people weren't wearing masks (we were). I kind of got used to having a bit of normality again, so it was a shock when a new national lockdown in England was announced a few days after we got back.

Luckily we were able to fit in one of our most important trips before the new restrictions came into place...

Read about Stockholm: Day One here and Stockholm: Day Two here!