June 11, 1999

Friends, family, countrymen . . .

Sometime around 9am Saturday the twelfth of June - tomorrow in now-time - Franca and I will walk out the front door of house sixty nine. It isn’t odd that we will be the lasts ones out. We are staying until the last day the dorms are open so that we may spend as much time together as possible. It is however odd that I should be the last one out for if you recall back in February I was planning to cut my stay in Swansea short and travel around Europe. I would say something about ‘the best laid plans’ but for fear of the obvious pun.

Franca and I have just returned from a short two day excursion to see the Roman Ruins of Bath England and then a very short trip - one and a half hours - to see Salisbury Cathedral. Bath was a resort city back when the Romans ruled southern England. I’m sure everyone knows about the Romans predilection for baths. Actually the Romans had a predilection for laziness. They were however masters at getting other people to do work for them. You can imagine that the Romans in England were a little put off by the weather. (I should tell you that the contemporary Romans - Italians - are still put off by the weather here in Briton.) When they discovered hot springs, or more likely discovered that the Celts had discovered hot springs, they evicted/plundered the area and built a bathhouse over the spring just like back home. When the Romans vacated the area the bathhouse fell into such disrepair as to become completely covered by earth. It wasn’t until sometime in the 1800s - I think - that they were rediscovered. Since then the city has adopted ancient Roman architecture for most of the city. Consequently a certain Italian filly I’m aquatinted with could almost picture herself back at home. She said that Bath most closely resembles Venice.

The main purpose in going to Salisbury was to see the cathedral and Stonehenge. Unfortunately, do to a miscalculation in bus schedules we only had an hour and a half to visit Salisbury. That was just enough time to take a rush tour of the cathedral but not nearly enough time to make it out to Stonehenge and back. Franca and I plan to take a day trip in the next few weeks to come back and see that most popular Druid clock.

“So, what’s up now?” you ask? I’ll tell you. On Saturday Franca and I will be going to London where we will be for about two weeks. She is doing her final thesis on the Irish Revolution and the House of Parliament in London has many books and documents that she needs to study. I will spend most of the days wandering around, writing, programming, taking photos and keeping my eyes open for job opportunities but I don’t have very high expectations. We will have four of five days before Franca flies back to Italy so we would like to go to Edinburgh. Afterward I will probably be headed back to the States - Oklahoma to be exact - around the 4-6th of July.

For the next few weeks in London I will have to visit cyber-cafés to do email. I don’t know how regular I will be so please be patient, or don’t be - it’s up to you.

The next email contains a few pictures I took in Bath. I hope you like them.

Love and happiness to all, Dan

Btw, even if there the Romans hadn’t left ruins of their bathing facilities Bath would still be appositely named do to the taste of its tap water.