Yesterday, I went to Bath for the day. Bath is famous for being one of the homes of Jane Austen, famous for her powerful love novels where the heroine is a girl. As a dedicated English Major it was exciting to travel to another literary relevant location. In most of her novels she mentions Bath as a place of relevance, and it was neat to explore the very sophisticated, rich and famous city of Bath through the eyes of Jane Austen. Before I went, I watched a handful of her movies in order to better picture it. If you ever get the chance to visit Bath, watch "Persuasion" first to get a real feel for the town as it was some 200 years ago.
But that isn’t all that Bath is famous for; it also holds Roman architectural remains and a rich history of Bath that is over 2,000 years old. There is also the Bath Abbey, which was founded in the 7th century. I visited the Abbey first and was amazed. It is stunningly beautiful both inside and out, and one of the rare places you can tour without having to pay money to enter. The high vaulted ceilings have beautiful paintings and every window is a vast wall of intricate stained glass.
Each tells a separate story and is stunning. The other strangely beautiful part of the abbey is the walls and floors. Every stone is a headstone. The entire floor is intricately carved stone with pictures and inscriptions. The walls are much the same, though many of the headstones are complete with carvings of faces or flowers that stand out in sharp contrast from the wall. It was eerily beautiful.
I then went to see the main tourist attraction in Bath: the Roman Baths. It is such an amazing piece of Roman architecture from some 2,000 years earlier. It is also the only hot spring in England. The Romans regarded it as a gift from the Goddess Minerva. Many of the carvings and ritual remains tell such an interesting history of the Romans. For example, they would write curses on pieces of metal paper and toss it into a ritual flame for the Goddess. They still have a bunch of these curses and most of them are cursing people for stealing clothes or other petty thefts. The history geek in me was very intrigued by all the Roman history in the middle of England.
The baths themselves are beautiful. I really enjoyed sitting beside them and just resting my hand in the warm water. I also had the chance to try some water, but I immediately regretted that decision. I thought it would taste delicious, right? All this hype about healing waters from the Earth and all this history of people taking the waters ... and then I drank it. It tasted like iron, the same kind of taste you get from biting your tongue and swallowing blood. Same taste. Absolutely disgusting.
I also visited the Fashion Museum in Bath and got to see historical clothing from the French court to Jane Austen’s time, and even before it. That was such a neat spin on the day because it gives you a visual historical idea of the town.
And I’m such a fashionista anyway that this amazingly cliché walk through history appealed to me.
There is also a college in Bath, so as day turned to night, tons of the Pubs filled with college students because the Six Nations Rugby Championship is going on now. It is quite the thing over here, kind of like football and the Superbowl.
I will say this: Bath is very different from the other places I have been in England. It is very "posh," as the English would say. Most of the store fronts and general vibe was tourist meets Vogue.
It’s strange to see that after hundreds of years it still possesses the vibe and general idea of the rich and famous. People traveled to Bath years ago for holidays and to taste the natural springs. It was a rich, sophisticated social center and that idea still seems to hold.
