FRIDAY's FAVE FIVE

more participants at Susanne at Living to tell the Story.

1. While we had such a good weather from the beginning of my round trip through the UK, it started to rain from Monday on, just the two last days of our trip !



I still had sunshine in Liverpool to visit the Beatles'places and where they started their career.

2. But then the next day we got our shower !



and visited Bath in pouring rain. My friend and I took a sightseeing bus to avoid the worst !

3.



We drove through beautiful green landscapes, even more green in the rain and Stonehenge too was full of tourists and their umbrellas ! Fortunately it was warm and dry in the bus !

4.



We spent the last night in London and visited the town and as it still rained we went to Harrod's and walked around. We also looked at the memorial of Diana and Dodi in Harrod's Egptian section in the basement.

Then it was time to catch our train back to Brussels. In not even 2 h we were there, very tired, but very happy with the tour we had done. It was so well organized and besides the daily fights for seats in the bus, everything went smooth, and there was nothing to complain about.

Mr. G. picked me up at the station and started a full detailed report of everything what had happened during my absence. As nothing special had happened I didn't even listen as I still was with my holiday memories.

5. I slept quiet long to recover from my 9 day's trip, and then started to unpack my suitcase and sort out the hundreds of pictures I had taken. That will probably take a few days !

If you want to read more about my trip just scroll down, I reported every day.


Thanks to all of you who followed my trip and commented ! I had no time to comment at all, it was already quiet difficult to post every day, but I wanted a kind of diary. Internet connection in some hotels was so expensive, although we always had the same hotels (Ibis and Premier Inn).

BATH AND STONEHENGE

From Cardiff where we had spent the night we haven't seen a lot, except some buildings in the rain ! It had started to rain, the first time since we left London a week ago.

When we arrived in Bath, which is a very beautiful town, it rained so much, that we took a Sightseeing bus to take us around with some others from our group instead of following our guide who did a walking tour !




I douldn't take a lot of pictures because the windshield was full of raintrops, but we saw a lot of the town and the guide, an English lady was absolutely great, she told us a lot of anecdotes of what happened in Bath during the centuries, as for example the men and women taking a bath in the source water fully dressed and then once dry they drank the water ! The clothes were full of fleas and bugs as they were never washed and so were the hair too.

After having a coffee which warmed us up, we continued our way through the rainy but beautiful landscape to Stonehenge.



I had been in Stonehenge last year in August (see here) so I didn't follow the others for the guided tour with headsets on your ears. I watched them from outside  and looked at the stones from far, they looked so different in the rain  as when I was there last year while the sun was shining and the sky blue.

On the way back to London, we got all a list of email adresses from all the members of our group and a beautiful red T-shirt from the Expat Tour company. Then it was time to say good bye, and we took the tube back to St. Pancras station. I had booked a Bed & Breakfast near the station in a little square enough far away not to hear the noisy main street.

We arrived at 6 in the hotel and stayed, we didn't even go out for supper we still had some muffins and other things which we ate with a cup of coffee and then went to sleep.

REDUCE YOUR WATER BILL

If you think your water bill is too high  you should have lived in the 17th and 18th centuries which were amongst the worst periods in terms of physical hygiene. Especially in France, which was one of the reasons that the best and most famous parfums were created there.

Nudity was frowned upon. For this reason people when washing did not take off their clothes. Into the 18th century, filth was considered as beneficial.

Medical theory of the time said water entered the body though the skin, causing diseases. Particularly hot water was harmful since it opened the pores of the skin, making the individual more vulnerable to diseases.

It is said that King Louis XVI took one bath in his life ..... on his wedding day. After that his mistresses sometimes fainted because of his strong body odor ! As there was a very  limited use of water for bathing, soap was not popular either until the late 1700s. In the 1700s, cleanliness and hygiene were sought in white linen. Because of this, until the end of the 18th century, most people bathed ‘dry’ or, in other words, using as little water as possible. Linen absorbed perspiration,and purified the body, and hence became a sign of the wearers cleanliness.

Therapeutic values were attributed to dirtiness. For example, urine soaked diapers were just dried before using them again. They were not washed. Urine was used as a beauty product to treat acne, amongst other things.

People avoided washing their hair since scalp oil was considered excellent for shiny, healthy hair. As a result, most people had head lice. If you could manage to endure the stench of a person, his house would finish you off. You would smell several chamber pots. Separate toilet rooms weren't popular until the 19th century. It was said that Versailles had a particular stench; since it was a long distance between chamber pots, one relieved oneself in a corner, any corner.

For the nobility, cleanliness was attempted through the use of cosmetics: perfume and cologne used in abundance to chase away bad odors, powder to dry greasy hair, etc. Artificial means, predominately wigs, were used to provide the appearance of cleanliness. Make-up could cover a variety of flaws.  In the 18th century, besides whitening their faces, they used blue coloring to touch up their blue vein lines. Black silk beauty spots were initially used to conceal blemishes and smallpox scars.

So take a bath once a month as we should save water .....