Day 20: Bath, England

June 23, 2013

Today we said goodbye to the big city of London and headed an hour and forty minutes west into the British countryside to the much smaller town of Bath. Bath is mainly known for two things: it is the location of hot springs where the Romans built Baths and it is the hometown of the famous writer Jane Austen. Although we planned to see both of those, we actually ventured west from London in order to see Stonehenge. This trip (to Europe) has partially been about tying our separate abroad experiences together. So at the beginning of the trip we did the train ride through the Alps that I didn't fit in when I was here last summer, and now at the end of the trip (tomorrow) we are doing Stonehenge which was something Clayton wanted to do, but didn't get a chance to when he was here almost 3 years ago.

Today, most of the day was spent traveling here. We got plenty of sleep last night and then took our time about checking out this morning. We took the noon train to Bath having a picnic of grocery store sandwiches, chips and cheesecake on the way. Once we arrived we checked into our hostel (again one that uses their bar as their reception desk) so we could leave our stuff. It was only 3pm so we decided to knock a sight off of our list: the Roman Baths.
Bathing was part of Romans' daily lives. This wasn't just taking a bath, it was bathing (naked of course) in increasingly hot water by moving from pool to pool, sitting in saunas, being massaged and having dead skin removed then dipping into a cold pool to close the pores. It was quite the ordeal and could take hours everyday. Bath was unusual compared to most baths because it had a natural hotspring. The Romans built their bath around it and since it was hot thought that it had some spiritual power so they also built a temple near it and put their sick in it to be healed. Since the Romans, higher structures have been built around the bath and spring mostly in the Victorian style which is mostly what you see in the pictures.

From the top walkway that has been built around the pool

Pool with the abbey in the background

Cool pool that people have been throwing change in

The mosaic tile floor was built on these piles to allow the floor to be heated.
The Romans bathed naked except for shoes so they didn't bur their feet.

After seeing the Roman baths we roamed around Bath a little while and saw the Pulteney Bridge, first completed in 1774, which crosses the river Avon and is famous in Bath. It is one of only 4 bridges in the world which has shops fully across both sides. On our walk around we also saw a garden along the river and some other pretty Bath scenery.

Bath Abbey

Bath Abbey

Park on the River Avon

Pulteney Bridge and the River

Pulteney Bridge

Park by the River

We went back to the hostel and ate at the bar downstairs where we both had a pretty good burger. We watched the end of a Cricket championship game and part of a soccer game. Cricket is like no sport of combination of sports we have. We haven't figured out all the parts yet, but it is basically only played by England and everyone England used to own (Ireland, India, South Africa etc.). You also see rugby on TV a lot over here, but you never hear about football or basketball at all so our sports news has been very different over here.

We are off to bed for now, but tomorrow we will have an all day tour including Stonehenge. If you would like a sneak peak, you can read about the tour we are taking here.