Thursday, June 26, 2008

Bath

Beautiful view in Bath, England. Too bad the weather didn't want to cooperate.

While I was in Bristol a few months ago, I went to Bath. It is the site of a remaining Roman bathhouse. And after you visit the bathhouse, you can go take a bath in the disgusting mineral water (yes, I drank the gross stuff). The town itself was quite charming, but very touristy and very, very tiny.

Dirty, dirty roman bathwater!

I only spent about 6 hours in the town so I didn't get to do much, but I saw a lot. After paying an arm and a leg to visit the Roman Bat
hs, I got to go on a FREE tour of the city. I know, you're thinking 'a free tour, it couldn't have been that good,' but it was. A little retired man took us all around the city and told us a ton about the architecture and the history of most of the major buildings.

Projections of Romans on the walls of the cool bath room. Oddly enough, all the scenes were a bit homo-erotic...I wonder why.

Maybe the most fascinating thing for me was looking at and hearing the history of Jane Austen's house. I actually learned quite a lot about her from the tour guide and it was really cool seeing where she lived, walked, etc. I also really appreciated all the Georgian houses and the columns. They're really lovely.

The most photographed view in Bath. A beautiful semi-circular set of private houses.

I'm not sure I would recommend a trip to Bath. If you are in the area, it's a great little half-day visit, but I don't think I would make a special trip just to see it. After all, you can go to Rome to see Roman baths and there are several other interesting small towns in England.

4 comments:

Aneesh said...

Good post :)

Anil P said...

Baths can be intriguing. I saw a Turkish bath of an Indian king in Bharatpur a few months ago.

I'm sure it must be quite a feeling to be where Jane Austen walked once.

hellomelissa said...

we used bath as our base for 3 days, and really got to talk/ wander/ know the place. we found walks through the hillsides and indy movie theaters hidden in alleys. the baths were the last place we went, and we didn't take an organized tour of bath. i fell in love with the town.

Unknown said...

Wow those pics are post card worthy! Just found your blog today and so gla d I tripped into it. Baths are very popular here in Hungary, as there are a lot of thermal geysers and spas around. Looking forward to reading more!