November 14, 2006
My 30th Birthday

Wake in: Cardiff
Sleep in: Bath

Last night was probably the best night at the hostel. I don't know if there was anything different about the people or if I'd finally gotten comfortable. I ended up watching Anchorman on DVD with a bunch of people. Two Canadians (both named Kelly, although one was a guy), a young English couple, an Australian tomboy called Naomi, and a guy from Israel whose name I never found out.

They let me pick the movie because today is my birthday. We laughed a lot. I still went to bed at 10 though. The girl Kelly was really nice. She is on a 10 month (!!) journey, kind of just going whenever, wherever. How cool is that? This morning she and I walked to Starbucks (again, I know) and talked about this and that over coffee.

Then I walked back to the hostel to check out and catch the train to Bath. I even remembered to stop at the station yesterday to buy my ticket. So my pack is heavy and I was thinking that it was a good think I didn't know the train time because I couldn't walk any faster even if I had to rush. But when I got to the station (resembling a turtle) I went to the information desk to find out which train I was meant to be taking. The guy told me I wanted the Portsmouth Harbor train and there was one there now if I could catch it. But when I got to the platform. . .no train. I thought I would have to wait an hour, but it turned out that the train was a bit late, so here I sit. I'm sitting at an actual little table with 4 train seats around it, which is prime real estate and quite handy for journaling.



hatter sent me a text saying that he missed his train and won't be there until 2. I'm kind of glad because I'm sweaty from carrying the pack and it would be nice to have a chance to wash my face, etc. I should get to Bath at 12.30 I think.

I wanted to remember to write some observations about the way the girls here always seemed "dressed." I'd never make it here long term because they never seem to dress bummy. You know...run to the grocery store in sweatpants, a t-shirt, and sneakers.

November 15, 2006
Wake in: Bath
Sleep in: Bath

So I found the hotel pretty uneventfully, after staring at the map in the train station for a while. I was very glad to put my pack down, I don't know how, but it seemed heavier. I set my stuff down in my own little yellow room and freshened up. I took some pictures of my room and the view from the window.




Then I went back to the train station to meet hatter. We had a wander around, had a pub dinner, wandered some more, had coffee.



In our wanderings we stopped at the Jane Austen Centre. There's a painted statue of Jane and I took a picture of myself next to her, but the way it came out she's looking at me like "Why the hell are you touching me?"


Today we will be celebrating my birthday with Jo, who is driving over from Southampton just to meet me!