...and Bath

"Your father's state of health must be a great drawback. Why does not he try Bath? Indeed he should. Let me recommend Bath to you."

--Jane Austen in Emma

Our bus was leaking a bit, but not much where I was sitting, so I wasn't particularly bothered by it as we headed of to Bath. Or Bawth, as they pronounce it over here. Try it; it sounds much more elegant and town-appropriate than the flat A we use. More pretty villages, more little forrests, more fields--and then the city! It's more of a town than a city, and I think it's meant to very much be and stay that way.

Here's the first glimpse of Bath.

Let me go ahead and say it now: I LOVED Bath. I loved its cathedrals and Regency architecture. I loved its abundance of shops and pubs and cafes. I loved its knowledge of its own historical significance, if that makes any sense--it seemed a self-aware type of place. (Brighton is a bit like that, too, but somehow seems younger, even though I don't believe there's much of an age difference between them.) I loved the tiny places with four floors and steep, twisty steps. And I loved the bright flowers everywhere--in pots, spilling from window boxes (by the way, I just wrote "spillowing" by mistake and had to correct it, but the flowers did look pretty spillowful), overflowing their beds, cut and set on tables.

We passed this house on the way in. I told myself somebody important to the historical world lived there once and their descendants are still there, but I actually have no idea who lived there or who lives there now. The presence of the plaque on the gate there probably means it has some sort of significance, though.

When the bus dropped us off, our guides set us free. Meet at 2:30 to see the Roman Baths--it's about 12:00 now, they said. Three other girls and i managed to stick together that two-and-a-half hours, and having the small group like that was really nice.

The weather was lovely, too.

And the buildings lining the streets are all very old and stately--the asphalt road and traffic signs (well, and the modern people) are the only immediately recognizable markers of the 20th/21st centuries.

This cathedral was truly majestic.

Somebody was getting married in it, too! There were very dressed-up people and beribboned cars all over the place--I imagine it was quite a wedding.

Example of flowers, as I was saying above.

There were lots of lovely fuschias, mostly in brilliant pinks.

There are lions like this all over the place, decorated differently--much like our winged horses at home. Wikipedia doesn't mention the lion being a Bath city symbol or anything, but I'm thinking that maybe it is?

Ok, having looked it up again, this is the reason for all the lions. Very much like our winged horses, indeed.

Isn't Eureka a cute name for a store? Especially a trading company. Go in, find something you can't be happy without, shout eureka!

You know, Jane Austen lived in Bath for a few years, and set Northanger Abbey and Persuasion there. Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers also mentions Bath, and Roald Dahl wrote a short story set there. Good company for an English major, huh?

And so darn cute.

You wouldn't see this in my hometown.

Or this. In the back of Food Lion, maybe. Somewhere in NYC, probably. But regular town, NC? No way.

Look--they fly the British flag all over the place here! Isn't it cute? And isn't it ridiculous how cute I think it is to fly a British flag when it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do while in Britain?

Another one of the pride.

We went to a few clothing stores and accessory stores...

No, we didn't go in here. But we should have.

And we went in here. It's called Lush, and apparently we have them in the US too.

I've never been to one before, though. The displays were gorgeous, with lots of tester products, and everything looked good enough to eat and smelled like a Yankee Candle store.

We explored the streets, too.

Check out the texture on this wall.

Finally, we went and had lunch at Coeur de Lion, the smallest pub in Bath. And it really is small.

There were about three tables upstairs, and the four of us took up all of one. The window was propped open with a stool, and the flowers planted over the awning were nearly inside the room with us.

Two of the girls got tomato-basil soup and cider; the other girl and I got BLT and Pepsi. The BLTs are different here because they use ham as bacon in Britain--it's basically country ham, just with a little less salt. And it's SO good. I fully enjoyed that lunch in that sunny, tiny upstairs room in that mismatched little pub--it truly was darling, even at the end when I managed to take a little tumble down the stairs. Also, newsflash: English people love coleslaw. Seriously, there's an entire aisle devoted to it at Sainsbury's. I always kind of thought it was a Southeastern US thing, but they had it when I went to Washington state, too, and I can't help but think that it seems a pity to spread it all over the world like this. I'm biased, though. I can't stand the stuff.

These pictures right here...I have about twenty more like them. But Blogger dislikes my picture use as it is (it takes me forever to put photos on this blog), so I had to really restrain myself. This was right next to Coeur de Lion in a banner-filled side street, and it has all sorts of vintage books. Some are old, like 1700s and 1800s old. But there were also first-editions of the Harry Potter books, too. I practically spouted out love for this little place, even though I bought nothing.

These are big and cumbersome and nonfiction, but lovely, yes? I love names. And I have an English surname myself, so the book seemed all that much more interesting.

And then we found a real-life tea shop! It smelled lovely and was manned by a friendly, talkative middle-aged man in an apron. He let us smell every type of tea they had in the glass canisters on the counter, and told us about the best points of each. And he told me that his mother made the sheep tea cosy in the front window, too!

I bought some cinnamon tea, which smells almost exactly like a Home Sweet Home Yankee candle (which is my favorite; I enjoy the fact that it smells like it should be red, but is actually pink), and the other girls bought tea, too--and two of them bought tiny, one-serving French presses. Every time I see them I think how much my youngest brother would love to see those things in action. Come to think of it, I think we have one, and it just never gets used. Hmm.

Anyway, isn't the display wonderful?

Next door to the tea shop--I would have positively flipped over this store five or ten years ago. As it was I was pretty excited. Look at that wallpapered tabletop and the purple molding!

We passed by a fresh flower market.

This river passes through town, and it's delightful to watch it laze between the old buildings on that side and the old buildings on this side.

Another wedding ribbon car!

I didn't buy anything in the town besides at the tea shop, but I came close several times. There was a nice sale on scarves, and it was a mite drizzly and chilly...however, I did not give in because we had to run meet up with the rest of the group and wait to go see the Roman Baths.

But while waiting, there was this fudge shop...

They let us see them making it, and talked all about how to make fudge properly. Then they gave us sugary, nutty, ever-so-faintly grainy fudge as samples. My hunk was chocolate walnut, but some of the other kids in our group (only about five people could really fit inside, so we filed in, watched, ate fudge, then filed out) got vanilla toffee, caramel pecan, butterscotch, double-chocolate marshmallow, maple butter fudge, peanut butter fudge, and so forth...

It was good.

This was my token to get into the Baths. I was very sad they took it back, because I thought it was cute.

In the Roman Baths.

This is the top level overlooking the great pool--it would have been a large, heated swimming pool back in the days of the Roman occupation.

There it is!

The baths themselves are mixed in with museum exhibits explaining how the baths were built, what they looked like, and what life would have been like thousands of years ago. It was very nice but very crowded, and those audio tour things are helpful but annoying. I guess I'm more of a normal human tour guide girl.

It boggles my mind to think how old these steps are, and how many feet have used them.

And really, I thought this floor looked pretty good for being fairly ancient.

Having existed since the days when Britain was filled with Roman soldiers and colonies, the baths unsurprisingly aren't intact. However, they are more so than you would expect, and parts have been rebuilt. The renovations are pretty old themselves. As American standards go, they're very old. It's a strange thing to see in a quaint English town--marble pillars and steam rooms and statues with Roman noses and hairstyles.

The water is hot and green and in some places (like this pool right here) bubbling gently thanks to the United Kingdom's only natural hot springs. It's a lovely shade of green; sort of a jade.

This was--and is--an overflow tunnel. The flash makes it look funny, but it's a pretty interesting feature.

This was in the gift shop. Harry Potter--in LATIN. Geeky love abounds.

There were reenactors around the main pool.

You're not allowed to touch the water, but it's tempting, because it's so pretty!

This guy said nothing really but "Salvete!" Salvete (pronounced sal-you-ay-tay, since Vs in Latin are Us in English) means welcome, as to a large group of people. Since he was just speaking to me I think he should have gone with the singular form "Salve!" but ah, well. (I took Latin when I was a junior in high school.) Anyway, he's supposed to be a priest, since the baths and hot springs were considered sacred to the goddess Minerva.

What really impressed me was how I could picture the Romans of thousands of years ago shedding their capes to take the waters--it seemed to make such a clearer mental picture than the Stonehenge druids did.

This glittery pool was once filled with very cold water and used as sort of a shock treatment after being in the hot water and steamroom (which is the orangey picture below). The glitter is coins--it's become a sort of wishing well.

I thought it was beautiful.

This was the steamroom. The floor would have rested on top of these stacks so that hot air could be circulated underneath the floor as well as in the room on top.

Here's the restroom. Let me tell you one thing--the Roman Baths have VERY nice bathrooms. Fitting, isn't it?

I was sorry to have to leave--we stopped at a Starbucks on the way out and I got an iced passion fruit tea, which was vaguely tangy and bright red and cold, and took a few last looks around.

This park was the last thing we saw before we got on the bus, where I finished The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. We got back around 8:00, and I was exhausted, but truly, it was a lovely day.