Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, and a Michelin Meal in Bath

  

This whole trip was lit with wonder for me, and I loved each experience more than the last, but Bath was phenomenal. What made it so special? The beautiful architecture, the many many independent bookstores, the fact that Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Charles Dickens walked its streets? Probably all of those things, and I remain obsessed. Also this post goes backwards, because I don't want to rearrange all the pictures. So let's start with dinner at the Michelin-starred The Olive Tree, located in the chic and quirky Queensbury Hotel! 

 

Michelin meals are hours long so the tablet came along too. It kept her mostly in check.

  

I have a passion for quirky wallpaper, and the hotel did not disappoint in that department--I wish I could have explored further. Just a semi-drunk American taking wallpaper pics, don't mind me.

   

 

     

 I usually play vegetarian at Michelin restaurants because menus tend to be fish heavy, and that's a waste of everyone's time as I can't choke it down. See menu below and yes, it was all delicious! I was also excited about the chance to try wines from countries that you don't usually see on menus, like Poland and Serbia.

 

  

 

  

 

  

 

 

 

  

  

Before dinner, it was raining (a theme of our trip, though we didn't let it get us down), so we tried to go into a gin bar to try their fancy cocktails. Unfortunately it didn't allow kids, so we ended up back on the street--I went back in to chug one down myself so I didn't miss out, and the kind bartender just ended up letting Taylor and Elowen back in anyway. There was no one else there, and we promised to drink quick. While I'm not a huge gin fan, I am a fan of trying local liquors, and this place has been distilling gin in Bath for 250 years. My favorite was the orange sloe gin, where oranges and sloes are combined with baking spices.

  

I picked "The Fall," which was strawberry and elderflower gin with milk oolong and rose, and also the "Annabel Lee," which gin, plum, ice cider, and chai spices. Both delicious!

 

  

We also strolled over to the Gravel Walk, a sort of Lover's Lane in Jane Austen's day and the setting for a love scene between Anne and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion. It was also a filming location for the Netflix movie version, but we don't speak of that atrocity. But how amazing to walk where Jane did, centuries later...it was so emotional be in Bath and know we were walking down the same streets, seeing the same buildings, and in some cases (see other posts) enjoying the same buns.

     

  

Speaking of buns, I also had to try Bath's rival bun--the Bath bun. It's a sweeter version, sprinkled with sugar and sultanas and with a melted cube of sugar inside. It didn't wow me, and I did prefer the Sally Lunn bun with jam and butter. (Also note the delicious hotel cocktail, which I believe was a lemon cake one for spring). Elowen and I almost threw hands over the sugar cube.

    

 

More on the Jane Austen center later in the post, but I did drag Elowen back to get a picture with the jovial and welcoming Mr. Bennet.

    

 

The lovely abbey, more on that later. 

 

  

 

Elowen was in a terrible mood when we stumbled across this bookstore, but as you see in a previous post I did go back on my own--on this visit I just darted in to take a quick look around, and the kids room was perfection. 

   

 

  

The good thing about Elowen's moods are that she's usually just hungry--so we stopped into the Raven of Bath, a traditional English pub, for lunch. She had bangers and was pleased that the "hot dog" was NOT white--because the one at the Michelin restaurant was and it traumatized her (she refused to eat that one). I of course had a meat pie with gravy, because one can't go wrong with such a choice. 

  

 

 

    

 

 

And before our afternoon adventures, I struck out into Bath alone! It was raining but I was undeterred.

  

Jane Austen lived in rooms at 25 Gay Street with her mother and sister, Cassandra--this was after her father died and their income was very diminished. Today it's a dental surgery.

  

My wanderings also took me to Mary Shelley's House of Frankenstein, an unrepentant tourist trap (and yes, I enjoyed it). While I've read Frankenstein, I don't know much about Mary Shelley and had no idea she'd lived in Bath and written much of Frankenstein there. And while parts of the museum were indeed hokey, I actually learned a lot about her life as well as her creation, which now centuries later has taken on such a life of its own. (I also learned that Percy Bysshe Shelley was a POS. Not all men but always a man!)

    

 

It also houses this eight-foot-tall animatronic based off of what Frankenstein actually would have looked like based on the book's description--no green skin. Building him took 12 weeks and took teh work of designers, sculptors, makeup artists, and engineers (he slowly breathes in and out, and I would absolutely have cried in that room as a child).

 

Her life was deeply tragic and it's now on my list to read a biography and learn more about her; also, how cool is it that a woman invented science fiction? I was too chicken to go through the haunted house in the basement, unfortunately--I was the only person in the museum and the loud noises and creepy dim paths quickly sent me scurrying back up the stairs. You don't know there's NOT a murderer down there waiting for a dumb tourist. 

And before I visited House of Frankenstein, I had a ticket to the Jane Austen Centre! This was also certainly a tourist trap, and I loved it too. First of all, the enthusiasm displayed by the many Jane Austen character re-enactors is unmatched. Here's me and Mr. Bennet after he flagged down a pack of teens to take a picture of us.

My group's guide was Lizzie Bennet, who takes you into a little holding room and briefly lectures you on Jane Austen before setting you free into the museum. There's a short film and then you walk through a pretty small museum with costumes from the 2007 Persuasion, informative displays about tea and fabric, and various other little corners teaching you about Jane's world. And of course you can't have a Jane Austen museum without some inclusion of the best Mr. Darcy, Colin Firth--they have the oil painting of him from the film as well as a life-sized figure of him having freshly emerged from the lake in his famous white shirt.

 

Life-like wax figure of Jane--she was quite tall!

   

Mr. Wickham writing at the station where you too can try your hand at a quill--it did not improve my handwriting. Also, he was handsdown the most handsome man I've ever seen in real life, complete with a roguish dimple--good job with that hiring decision, Jane Austen Centre. I only got a picture from the side, as he was having trouble with a contact...oops. And below I am scandalized to see Mr. Darcy in his underclothes.

    

 

    

 

 

A Jane Austen dollhouse.

 

 

  

 

  

And now we've made it to the start of the day--the Jane Austen Centre didn't open till 10 and the Roman Baths opened at 9, giving me a scant 45 minutes to zip through. Honestly, it wasn't enough time...I'm so glad I didn't skip it because it was phenomenal to see all that history and how well preserved the outer bath is, but at the same time you really need half a day. It's so, so well done--the audio tour is detailed and lively without ever becoming boring, and inside they've cast holograms of people in Roman clothing, acting as they would have in the various rooms, to bring it all to life.

  

 

 

  

And finally, the front of our hotel, which was perfectly located--you step out and are right in the heart of Bath, a few minutes' walk from the Abbey. Also pictured is the Huntsman, where we had pavlova (which I can never pass up).