Bath

Sorry it's been a while since I posted, June has been so busy with YW's camp, family reunions, piano lessons, and summer activities! Here are a few of my pictures from Bath. We planned an entire day to wander around the streets of Bath, which turned out to be a little bit too much time for a couple of people who aren't very into shopping; but was an excellent place for people watching, which we are both into!

Bath Abbey in the background, Roman Baths in the front. The whole Roman Bath experience is like visiting an archeological dig. They are uncovering ruins that different civilizations built upon, and they are trying to take it back down to what the Romans first created. The baths were filled to different levels at different times, so you can see varying water level marks on the walls. 

Standing outside the Roman Baths

View from the terrace of the main bath. The Romans had a roof over the bath, but today it is open to the sunlight, which makes the algae grow, giving it the green color. The water would have been clearer back then. Also, you cannot get in the water. They don't like you to even touch it, because it is untreated. I did stick my toe in, though, in the place where it runs from the Sacred Spring into the main bath.

View of the main bath from the ground.

The Sacred Spring. This is where the water comes up out of the earth. You can see from the marks on the walls that the Sacred Spring has been filled to different levels over time. They believe that the level it is now is the level the Romans intended. The water is very warm, and you can see little bubbles where it is bubbling up. As it flowed into the main bath, the temperature was about that of a hot tub, so I would imagine in the Sacred Spring it is even warmer. The water flowed into a series of baths, each progressively cooler, before flowing into the river. They also had cold baths.

Part of the ruins. There was an intricate system of different baths, and drains. I think this was one of the drains that drained water to the river.

The flow from the Sacred Spring to the main bath. (I stuck my toe in here, to see how hot the water really was. It is really quite hot--like a hot-tub.)

This was a sauna room. The stacked tiles held up a slabs of stone which formed a floor. There were furnaces on the far wall where the heat was forced underneath the floor and heated the room. It was such a good system, that the floor became too hot to walk on, so they had to wear slippers to protect their feet from being burned. Pretty genius for such a long time ago. They said slaves would have had to crawl under the floor between the columns to clean out the soot that collected. 

Bath Abbey

Beautiful!

Stained glass

Bath Circus. It didn't take us long to realize that "circus" simply means circle...not a show involving elephants and lions. There were 4 of these quarter-circular buildings surrounding a large circular park in the center (like a very large round-about). We sat here and let our aching feet rest for a minute.

Royal Crescent. If you've ever seen a Jane Austin movie, where they vacation in Bath, they are always seen walking down the street in front of the Royal Crescent. These are town-homes which were built in about 1760, which form a circular arc which is quite impressive. The day we visited, it was unusually warm, so everyone was out sunbathing on the lawn in front. In fact, the whole week we were there, we had beautiful sunny weather.

Another view of the Royal Crescent, which is a great example of Georgian Architecture.

River Avon, which is the river the baths drain into, as well as the river Strattford is upon.

Flowers outside the Abbey

If you've ever heard the song Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel, you may be interested in the next few pictures. This is the famous hill, and the city lights he talks about seeing are the lights of Bath. We didn't climb it in the dark--we were lucky to be able to find it and navigate up the one-lane dirt road in the daylight. (Props to my friend Chris who was the driver on this journey...she had to back up two or three times to let an aggressive driver pass who we met head-on.) The hillside was dotted with cows...and covered in their pies.

City of Bath from Solsbury Hill

Sign explaining the history of the site.

Bath

At one of the shops in Bath, there was a whole wall of old sewing machines. So cool!

We also visited a fashion museum, which was my idea. I loved it. I think Chris was rather bored, but she humored me. It was amazing to see such a neat collection of old clothing. My favorite class in college was History of Costume, and the really old clothes (from the 1700s) were amazing to see. I would have loved to put some gloves on and been able to feel them and see how they were constructed. When we visited the Globe in London, there was a clothing display, as well, which was fascinating to me! I will post those pictures in another post.