"Splish, Splash, I was Visiting Bath"

Bath is a very stylish city, with a lot of the buildings being made of 'Bath Stone', which is a pale, cream stone found near Bath. There are lots of buildings around with all manner of things one may need. There are also lots of street performers through out the streets doing a variety of acts for money. One section of the city near Bath Abbey had a lot of benches all in a giant square and a man and woman were singing in the center. Almost as if it was a small out door concert.

The city was very clean and fresh with lots of interesting buildings to look at. I enjoyed visiting, but we were not there very long so I did not get to see very much of the actual city.

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My roommates and I were only in Bath for a few hours, so we really did not get to do much. However, we did visit the Roman Baths and view the Queen's Crescent.

While in line for the Roman Baths, which are the remains and restorations of the old public houses that Romans used to use, we did get to see Bath Abbey, which was nearly next door. It was very interesting with the staircase that run up and down the sides showing angles climbing up to heaven.

I had visited the Roman Baths in one of my previous visits, so I was not exceptionally excited to see them again, but they had actually been remodeled quite a bit since I was last there and it was much nicer this time.

Upon entering you got a device that would play recorded messages about whatever you were looking at. It was nice, but I began only listening to the children's versions pretty quickly. For the adult version it was a woman who would go into lots of detail about what was happening, where it came from, why it was made, etc. I really did not ned that much detail, and the kid version had fun characters that would give you an overview of what it was you were looking at.

The baths themselves were pretty large with several different rooms and chambers. Most of them might have at one point been for bathing, but had been converted into more of a museum that you could walk through, although they did keep some of the baths running and you could see the steam rolling right off of the water from them being so hot. I think they said it got up to almost 100 degrees sometimes, and was heated from an underground spring. (I'll tell you that sounds pretty good right about now though, especially since we just had snow yesterday.)

There were also actors dressed up like Roman citizens from when the baths were in use who walked around and talked about their lives back then. There was even one woman who would show the different types of makeup someone might wear and how to put it on.

My favorite part though, was one of the small baths at the end of the visit. It was in a darker room and was lit from within the water to show off all the glittering stones at the bottom. It turned out these stones were actually different pence and pound pieces that people had thrown in for good luck. It was just really pretty to look at as the wate moved around and some of the light reflected the waves on the ceiling, walls, and people's faces.

At the very end, right before leaving, you could taste some of the bath water (which was clean, they promised) and ran straight out of an unstopped spicket. The water smelled a bit mentally  and tasted like nickels, but besides that it did not taste that bad to me. However, I looked over at my roommates and they all had extreme disgust written all over their faces. Whatever tastebuds I needed to make that face, I am glad I am missing them.

After the Roman Baths we walked around for a while until coming to the Queen's Crescent, which is basically what it sounds like. It is a very expensive and lavish section of Bath that has the houses shaped into a giant crescent while overlooking a large park. The park apparently used to have sheep in it, and maybe still does although they weren't out when we were there, so that the rich people who lived there could wake up and pretend they lived in the country for the few seconds they looked outside.

Until next time...

Embrace the Odd,
Caitlin

P.S.- The title is based of the song "Splish, Splash, I was Taking a Bath" by Bobby Darin.

"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm." -Vince Lombardi