On visiting Bath, England, again

Poulteney Bridge, Bath Spa, UK

I'm in England for a few days, accompanying my wife Patty as she attends a conference for writers in education. After we arrived at Heathrow, we took the train to Bath, where Patty lived for five months at the end of 2008 while she was teaching at Bath Spa University. She was living in an apartment in a street that is mentioned in one of Jane Austen's novels. La Austen didn't like Bath much, but then what did she know? Most of the town really does look like the above photo, and I got a kick out of flying across the Atlantic to visit my American wife while she was living in this splendid Georgian city in England.

I used to live in a town called Reading, about halfway between here and London, and I would come here a lot for day trips at the weekend. I still can't get over the irony of the fact that in order to experience this city at the high end of the market, as it were, I had to first go to live in the USA and marry an American woman.

There is a good art museum here, the Holburne, but it's currently closed for renovations. We don't have much time to do anything other than to see old friends at the university, and to consume as much great Indian food as we can before moving on to the conference. And then on Monday, it's back to Chicago to brace ourselves for the onslaught of winter.
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