Splish Splash, We Took a Trip to Bath

Monday, August 30th was a bank holiday in England, which gave us a nice long three day weekend to venture outside of London and explore another part of the country. So Saturday morning we boarded a westbound train for Bath, about an hour and a half from London.

Bath City Center

The town of Bath is famous today because of its natural hot spring the Romans discovered two thousand years ago. They believed the waters held healing powers, so they built the Roman Baths, a huge temple complex built directly over the spring. By about 70 AD, the city was thriving and travellers would come from all over the Roman Empire to take a dip in the powerful waters. The only problem was that one of the most common ailments of the day that was thought to be curable by the baths was leprosy – so one of my buddies and I might be hanging out after a long, hard day’s work of killing Celts, just minding our own business discussing the value of our Gladiator trading cards, when all of a sudden, a foot floats by, followed by a pinkie.

Davidus: “I thought you wrote a strongly-worded letter to maintenance about this??”
Jeremius: “Curse the gods, let’s get out of here!”

And so, the Roman Baths were eventually deserted, not to become popular again until the Georgian era in the 1700s. The hot spring water is still bubbling up today. As part of the tour, you can even drink some to give the healing powers a shot, which we tried. Trust me, the only power this water has is the ability to make everything taste like metal for the rest of the day.

Inside the Roman baths

Bath water fountain in Pump Room 

Another hot-spot we visited that afternoon was Sally Lunn’s, the oldest home in Bath and a restaurant. The home was built in the 1400s. Sally Lunn moved in in 1680 and ran a teahouse and bakery from the kitchen basement, which is now a tiny museum. Honestly, it is just a basement with some pots lying around and a mannequin cook, and if we had been charged admission I would have stolen the mannequin as a souvenir.

Creepy Sally Lunn basement (with stalactites growing in the corner)

Sarah and I both had tea and buns. Both recipes are passed down with the deeds to the house and have not changed since 1680. It was really cool eating a meal that’s been prepared from the same recipe that’s 100 years older than the United States.

After having tea and touring the baths, we headed over to our B&B to check out the room, have a glass of wine on the balcony, take in the views, and relax a bit before dinner... Oh yeah, I also had to Skype-in to join some friends in Texas for a Fantasy Football draft – talk about romance! It was actually really nice for both of us to get to see and talk to our friends in Austin and stay involved with the group like we were still there. 

After the draft, we hopped in a taxi to get dinner at The Bathwick Boatsman, a nice little restaurant on the banks of the River Avon. The food did not disappoint, but I would like to warn everybody that there is such a thing as eating too much melted truffle butter, and the result is a very sad and uncomfortable David House. It was difficult to get to sleep that night, and I thought I would never want to eat butter again, but seeing this kid’s reaction to his fried butter at the Texas State Fair has brought me back to reality:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alzQ64kwsTw

On Sunday morning, after starting our day with a delicious full English breakfast and pain au chocolat at the B&B, we headed out to explore more of the city. We walked through Victoria Park to the Royal Crescent, a row of very expensive, luxurious apartment buildings. This street then leads to the Circus, more apartment buildings arranged in a circle around a roundabout. We were hungry from all of our walking, so we stopped at a European market in one of the smaller parks. I had Spanish paella and Sarah had German potato salad. We ate and walked to the bus stop for our tour to Stonehenge.

On our hour long ride to Stonehenge, our tour guide showed us the famous Wiltshire white horse carved into the side of a hill, some burial mounds, thatched roofs, and a prison from the 1700s.

Stonehenge was not very crowded, but as always, it was very windy! We tried not to blow away while walking around the stones and listening to our audio guides. It’s amazing that with all of the knowledge and technology available to archaeologists today, there is still no clear, agreed-upon understanding of Stonehenge. It’s unbelievable that the ancient builders somehow transported the stones, some of which weigh over 40 tons, all the way from Wales just using log-rollers and then arranged them without any modern machinery to do the heavy lifting. Even though this was my third trip to Stonehenge, it was great to experience it with Sarah.

The best part of the trip took place as soon as we got back into the city... we went shopping!!! Yaayyy! It was so awesome holding Sarah’s purse and looking at all kinds of neat dresses, tops, and jackets! We should do that every weekend! Luckily, we actually made a couple purchases so it wasn’t a waste of time.

After the shopping extravaganza, we wanted to eat at Jamie Oliver’s new Italian restaurant in Bath – Jamie’s Italian (original name!) – but they don’t take reservations. So we went extra early to avoid the crowds. It took a while to find the restaurant, as it’s hidden upstairs in the middle of a shopping center. And you can’t open the doors... you have to be invited in. Luckily, there weren’t that many people there at 5:30 so we got in! Sarah had Italian nachos (crispy mini cheese ravioli with a spicy arriabata sauce) and (against my expert advice) truffle butter and parmesan tagliatelle. For dessert, she had an amaretto and raspberry brownie with vanilla ice cream. I had an antipasti platter to start, and spaghetti bolognese. For dessert, and I know this is weird, I had a bloody mary and “the world’s best olives” (HEB’s olive bar is way better).

The good thing about eating early is that we had time to see Jane Austen’s house and make the Bizarre Bath Comedy Walk at 8PM.

Sarah in front of Jane Austen's Bath home

The Bizarre Bath Comedy Walk is a 2-hour walk around the city led by a comedian. No, it is not a city tour. No, there is nothing historical or factual about the tour. It is simply a comedy show, but you’re making your way through Bath during the performance. They don’t take reservations and there is no size limit, so the crowd on Sunday night was about 100 people. The comedian was great! He involved the audience a lot, even making Sarah and me the butt of one of his jokes. And Sarah walked off all that truffle butter, so she didn’t have an upset stomach that night!

When we got back to the hotel Sarah watched a movie and I took a bubble bath. I’ve been made fun of before for my bubble baths, but I love them! We had one of the suites at the B&B with a jacuzzi tub so I definitely wanted to try that out. Unfortunately, I got a little greedy and put too much bubble bath into the tub so I couldn’t turn on the jacuzzi without bubbles overflowing and flying everywhere! The good news is the next day we had a whole spa day planned so I could enjoy the water then! Hooray!

After another full English breakfast and more pain au chocolat on Monday morning, we went to Thermae Spa for a 4 hour spa session in the magical waters of Bath (sans lepers and floating body parts). The water was really warm – hopefully not a result of all the geriatrics swimming around with uncontrollable bladders. First, we hung out in the Minerva pool indoors. Then we braved the chilly air in the rooftop pool, which was actually really warm too, and had great views of the city. We were just a little cold running from the changing area into the water. Then we tried out the steam room. There was a jacuzzi foot massage area, but I had to share my foot pool with Sarah because my jacuzzi was broken. I had bad luck with jacuzzis last weekend... There were four different steam rooms surrounding a rainforest shower. We tried the mint and eucalyptus room and the lavender room. Then we cooled off in the rainforest shower. After we had a light lunch in the cafe, we went back to the pools to relax a bit more.

When our 4 hours were up, we still had some time to kill before our train back to London left, so we left the spa and took a tour of Bath Abbey. Our two tour guides were about 12 years old. One of them was just like Quasimodo (his name was George), swinging around the bell tower like a hyper kid (which he was). They were pretty knowledgeable though, and just like little old men (see video above of fried butter kid dancing like a little old man).

Abbey overlooking the Baths - we had a great city view from the roof

After the tour, we headed back to the B&B to pick up our bags and get on the train back home. We haven’t yet decided where our next trip will be, but we’ll keep you posted!