Salus Per Aquam….

….apparently stands for Spa, which is where we were on Saturday!  (although this acronym may not actually be true)

Mum, my sister-in-law, and almost sister-in-law arrived at my house Friday night, all ready and eager for a spa day on Saturday followed by lunch and a bit of shopping – a real girls weekend.
We had a rather early start on Saturday morning because we knew that if we left it too late, we would have to queue for much longer at the Thermae Bath Spa.  (Which, believe it or not, is actually on “Hot Bath Street”!

It was glorious, we had two hours of sitting in the thermal waters or in the steam rooms.  The great thing is that one of the thermal pools is actually an open air pool, and even better is that is it is a rooftop open air pool so you can sit in the warm water and look out over Bath!!  It was a bit cold though so you really had to make sure that you sat well down in the water and not let your ears get too cold.  ;-)  The steam room were fabulous – there were four different large glass rooms with stone benches and they each had different aromas – lavender, eucalyptus, mint, and menthol – the menthol was just far too strong for me and my eyes didn’t like it, but it was lovely to sit in the lavender room and just sit and absorb the steam.


After we’d dried off and were feeling quite invigorated and refreshed we went and had a look at the Royal – as seen above! It was a bit difficult to find lunch – we had intended to have lunch at Jamie’s Italian, but the queue put us off and so we just went and found a little place that was rather amusing cos they didn’t quite seem to have their act together, but the food was ok!

We got home that evening feeling quite exhausted and so we had a pajama evening with lots of wine, food and DVDs!  We watched Coco Before Chanel which took us by surprise because we weren’t expecting the film to be French with English subtitles, although, on thinking about it, we should probably have realised.  ;-)

In any case, we had a fabulous weekend and we would love to try and make this a regular event.  Even if we don't, I have another spa weekend to look forward to in a couple of months and the future sister-in-law wants a spa weekend for a hen weekend!!

unfamiliarity!

There is something quite disconcerting about driving an unfamiliar car.  You see, I borrowed the courtesy car from the garage today cos they had to service and MOT my car and I didn't want to take a day off in order to leave the car at the garage.  (point of fact - the car was meant to be done the Friday before last but the garage agreed to let me have the courtesy car today if I waited for the service/MOT because they had someone off sick back then.)

Anyway....I had a little red Mitsubishi Colt (2007 reg) and it really was very strange driving this car.  For a start, my car is probably particularly low to the ground and so driving this red car I felt as though I was about two metres up!!  (yes, I know that's an exaggeration, but it jolly well felt like it.) 

When I first got in the car I had to rearrange all the mirrors to suit  me and then I had to make sure that I knew where the lights, indicators and windscreen wiper controls were!! I only had the car for one day so I didn't worry too much about not finding the rear windscreen wiper control and by the end of the day I STILL couldn't figure out how to put the headlights on full beam instead of just dipped.  Fortunately I wasn't going far and so didn't need them...although I must have confused a lorry driver when I flashed to indicate that he could pull in and instead of a flash, he had two full ON beams for a couple of seconds while I scrabbled around to turn them off (and on and off again!!)

I reckon that there must be no stranger experience than that of driving an unfamiliar car - I mean if you're driving it for just one day then you don't have time to get used to the dimensions of the car or how the brakes react and little things like that.  Which certainly make parking a challenge - lets just say that I made sure that I parked away from the other cars and let them park around me!!  Hey - I wasn't wonky, I just didn't want to ding any other car or even this one!

While it was a weird experience, I did think that it was a nice little car and I did like the fact that it told me how many petrol miles I had left and how cold it was outside (1C - too cold!) - information that I don't get in my present car, so I am looking forward to having something like that when I eventually upgrade the car which is not happening any time soon.

Addendum: it IS possible to take efficiency too far - I got home with newly serviced and MOT'd car only to find a reminder for said MOT on my doormat!!!

Rugby and music!

Am just watching the opening scenes of the Welsh/English rugby match playing this afternoon and, while I don't know much Welsh, I just loved listening to the players and half the stadium sing the Welsh national anthem - it really stirs the blood.

It stirs it in a way that the English national athem just doesn't - perhaps it's because I don't know the meaning behind the Welsh words, or perhaps the Welsh tune is just a better one - one that makes you want to stand up and sing as well (but I wont cos I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket!).

It's probably the same reason why I love hearing the Welsh male voice choirs - they just sound amazing.  When I listen to songs like "Men of Harlech" or "Myfanwy", I just get a tingle up  my spine listening to those deep glorious voices - I am sure that there is nothing quite like it elsewhere.

Anyway, it's the start of the Six Nations rugby tournament, it used to be the Five Nations of England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and France, and then Italy got involved, so it's now the Six Nations and it gets everybody's blood up and roaring for their home team!!  I don't watch a great deal of sport, but I do find that rugby is more interesting than football and you certainly don't get any rugby players pretending to dive ;-)

Good luck to everybody - may the best team win!!