Bath

Last weekend we made a quick trip to Bath, which is just 1.5 hours west of London on the train. I thought the town was really lovely (though quite touristy), and I'd like to go back one day. I really enjoyed the hills. It's quite hilly there, and London is mostly flat, so it was a nice change of scenery. Our view from the hotel was pretty amazing (seen above, when the weather was taking a turn). I liked seeing the houses rolling along the green hills. We toured the Roman baths, went to Bath Abbey, relaxed in the Parade Gardens where we could admire the Pulteney Bridge, had tea with Mr. Darcy in the Jane Austin center, strolled around the town, took a sightseeing bus and the skyline bus, which cruised the outskirts of the city up along the hills, and we had a delicious dinner--Indian food. Yum. 

And Lois got to chase a hot air balloon. She wanted to catch it.

Treasures

Last week I went to the big flea, well, one of the bigger flea markets in London, the Kempton Park market. This time I rented a man and van. I usually get what I think of as "sold envy" when I'm at markets here: I watch people haul away loads of good junk! Since we don't have a car, and I can't really carry anything too large on the train, I thought I'd hire someone who could haul my junk home. I've been needing a bedside table and a small bookshelf for a while now, and I've wanted some small furniture for our little patio. So I made a list and actually found a lot of what was on it. Here's a bit of what I brought home. 

Paintings weren't on my list but I couldn't resist these two bargains.

My bedside table before...

And after! I didn't do anything to it really, as you can probably tell, but I like it that way, all chippy. I bought a handful of other things like a bookshelf, a bench, and some patio furniture. But I didn't take pictures of those yet. But I'll post some pictures of the patio soon. 

Our little patio has looked quite sad for months now until I found this pile of pots! I wanted to make our patio look better and finding these pots was just the motivation I needed. A guy down the street was tossing them. There were more than what's shown here, and most of them were big terra-cotta pots, so I made a few trips and got them home. Below is the patio in its before state, but after I brought some of the pots home.

And here's a peek of the after through our living room. More pictures of it coming soon.