Back in pre-baby days, Andrew and I were big fans of the Ibis hotel chain for European travel -- very cheap, conveniently located and reasonably clean (By this I basically mean, bed bug free -- I am ever-vigilant against these creatures, I don't call it paranoia, because the Bed Bug Fear is entirely justified... Those mothers are everywhere).
Ibises (Ibi?) are not suited to travel with a child, though, because the rooms are minuscule .. If you're travelling with a kid who goes to bed at 8 pm, it means that you're all going to bed at 8pm, or you're lying on a hotel bed in complete darkness waiting for the kid to go to sleep before you turn the TV on to the lowest possible volume and attempt to lip read whatever it is that the Top Gear guys are saying to each other. Not a good scene.... All that lying in the dark gives you a lot of time to start imagining that bed bugs are crawling over your legs and arms and nesting into your suitcases, ensuring that you then become the Typhoid Mary of bed bugdom.
Ibises (Ibi?) are not suited to travel with a child, though, because the rooms are minuscule .. If you're travelling with a kid who goes to bed at 8 pm, it means that you're all going to bed at 8pm, or you're lying on a hotel bed in complete darkness waiting for the kid to go to sleep before you turn the TV on to the lowest possible volume and attempt to lip read whatever it is that the Top Gear guys are saying to each other. Not a good scene.... All that lying in the dark gives you a lot of time to start imagining that bed bugs are crawling over your legs and arms and nesting into your suitcases, ensuring that you then become the Typhoid Mary of bed bugdom.
A few go rounds of this has made us realize that it's worth spending the extra money to get Violet an extra room so that we can put her to bed elsewhere and then
continue our own sophisticated pursuits (watching cable television while eating strange-flavoured chips you can’t get in Canada). In the initial trip planning I’d booked us
into a cheapish hotel just outside of Bath. They didn’t have any suites, which
meant that we’d all be prisoners to Violet’s jetlag and would have to sleep when
she wanted to sleep, without the blissful possibility of being able to watch
the British version of Pawn Stars or Toddlers and Tiaras.
Luckily a friend told me about Airbnb.com, where you can go and stay at someone's actual apartment whipe paying less than hotel rates. Andrew, with his typical hesitancy, wasn't certain about staying at some stranger’s house, but I was more enthusiastic. While I did have some nervousness – what if it was a scam? What if it was super noisy? What if (gulp) it was crawling with bed bugs?All fears were allayed when after a vigorous session of getting completely lost in Bath, being honked at by a giant truck, maybe nearly clipping a pedestrian and parallel parking on a slope, on the wrong side, whilst the entire population of strange, shirt-less Bathian old men watched, we arrived at our apartment
It was a gorgeous 2 bedroom flat at the top of one of Bath’s iconic Georgian homes. The wifi was strong, the white wine in the fridge waiting for us (!) was icy and although it didn't have a TV, it was cool, quiet and bed-bug free.
The view from our living room:
We crashed on the first day, and then stumbled jet-laggedly down the hill to Bath Centre... We grabbed some groceries, sussed out the lay of the land and headed home again. The next day we hit the Roman baths – we cleverly arrived right at 9am when they opened, thus beating the onlslaught of tourists that cram into every possible crevice of the place, sort of like bedbugs, actually...
After visiting the baths, we had quite the whiney whinerstein on our hands, who didn't want to do much walking , so we opted for one of those hop on, hop off buses which we’ve never done before. Pre-child we were always sneery of the things, because they were so obviously the preserve of fanny-pack wearing TOURISTS, whereas we were sophisticated TRAVELERS who understood that any trip out of Canada was actually just an elaborate and expensive reason to purchase and consume huge quantities of Nutella.
As with so many things about parenthood, I have now changed my tune. Those buses are awesome. You pay a man to drive you around to all the main touristy things. You don't have to figure out where to go, or what you should see - you don't get lost, the bus just takes you to what you need to look at and you get to SIT (one of my favourite things!) while some dude tells you historical tidbits about Queen Victoria – she had fat ankles apparently -- and then it dumps you out at all of the various touristy spots you should see.
That being said, apart from the Baths, we did nothing officially touristy in Bath – we skipped the Costume Museum, the Art Gallery, the tour of Jane Austen’s house (Violet’s appreciation of Jane’s rich and subtle skewering of Georgian society is woefully underdeveloped). Instead, we did suss out a very cool kid’s park:
Violet also took some time for her very favourite activity -- finding and playing with every single pay phone she comes across:
Luckily a friend told me about Airbnb.com, where you can go and stay at someone's actual apartment whipe paying less than hotel rates. Andrew, with his typical hesitancy, wasn't certain about staying at some stranger’s house, but I was more enthusiastic. While I did have some nervousness – what if it was a scam? What if it was super noisy? What if (gulp) it was crawling with bed bugs?All fears were allayed when after a vigorous session of getting completely lost in Bath, being honked at by a giant truck, maybe nearly clipping a pedestrian and parallel parking on a slope, on the wrong side, whilst the entire population of strange, shirt-less Bathian old men watched, we arrived at our apartment
It was a gorgeous 2 bedroom flat at the top of one of Bath’s iconic Georgian homes. The wifi was strong, the white wine in the fridge waiting for us (!) was icy and although it didn't have a TV, it was cool, quiet and bed-bug free.
The view from our living room:
We crashed on the first day, and then stumbled jet-laggedly down the hill to Bath Centre... We grabbed some groceries, sussed out the lay of the land and headed home again. The next day we hit the Roman baths – we cleverly arrived right at 9am when they opened, thus beating the onlslaught of tourists that cram into every possible crevice of the place, sort of like bedbugs, actually...
The only shot we took at the Baths that worked. Apparently there is this thing called a "flash" that you're supposed to use when you're deep in the bowels of the earth examining 2000 year old Roman ruins that are lit only by mood lighting...
After visiting the baths, we had quite the whiney whinerstein on our hands, who didn't want to do much walking , so we opted for one of those hop on, hop off buses which we’ve never done before. Pre-child we were always sneery of the things, because they were so obviously the preserve of fanny-pack wearing TOURISTS, whereas we were sophisticated TRAVELERS who understood that any trip out of Canada was actually just an elaborate and expensive reason to purchase and consume huge quantities of Nutella.
As with so many things about parenthood, I have now changed my tune. Those buses are awesome. You pay a man to drive you around to all the main touristy things. You don't have to figure out where to go, or what you should see - you don't get lost, the bus just takes you to what you need to look at and you get to SIT (one of my favourite things!) while some dude tells you historical tidbits about Queen Victoria – she had fat ankles apparently -- and then it dumps you out at all of the various touristy spots you should see.
That being said, apart from the Baths, we did nothing officially touristy in Bath – we skipped the Costume Museum, the Art Gallery, the tour of Jane Austen’s house (Violet’s appreciation of Jane’s rich and subtle skewering of Georgian society is woefully underdeveloped). Instead, we did suss out a very cool kid’s park:
Violet also took some time for her very favourite activity -- finding and playing with every single pay phone she comes across:
Look at that delighted face... It does make you wonder whether hauling her across the ocean was actually worth it. There's a payphone at the corner of Preston and Gladstone, two blocks from our house... I won't let her play in it though -- too afraid of bedbugs hiding in the receiver.
2 comments:
Yay, AirBnB!
What a sigh of relief and great first day in Bath post.
Yay, AirBnB!
What a sigh of relief and great first day in Bath post.
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