Daytrip to Bath

Yesterday we took a daytrip to Bath. Bath is a town about an hour and a half away, and has these natural hot springs. Because of this, the Romans decided to make this a spa town, and build these Baths out of the hot springs. Then the English settled here and built a giant abbey.

We went on a 2 hour walking tour when we first arrived. This included seeing a lot of the way Bath developed - first as the Romans built in, then by monks in the middle ages, then as a nice retreat for the rich during the Victorian ages. Here's a video I took of a circus of houses we saw. The tour guide was very detailed and candid about everything, including the lack of plumbing and what they did about it, but I'll spare the details.

The Roman baths were (as I remembered when I was here 14 years ago) really dirty. But the rest of the city was a lot nicer (and cleaner) than the first time I was here. There was a lot of shopping, and it seemed like there were a lot of tourists.

Bath also has a river running through it, and they set up some nice pathways and overlooks along it. There is also a bridge with shops built into it, like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.









The food was also good - we all had fish and chips for lunch (in the picture). Then at night we ate at Sally Lunn's House, which has the famous "Lunn Bun" - a bun or trencher which the meat is served on top of, which used to act as the plate. This is the oldest house in Bath, dating from the 17th century. But the oven was apparently used by monks in the middle ages. They claim that King John ate bread cooked in their oven.