The Roman Baths!
Day 2 of the weekend trip - Saturday in Bath
It was really hard to get up on Saturday. We were pretty exhausted, and I always think it is hard to wake up in hotels. We finally dragged ourselves down and had our first real cooked breakfast since we have gotten here. It was great. We even grabbed extra croissants on the way back to our room :) We finished getting ready and headed out to the buses to go to Bath.
Bus ride = nap time. Always. So we woke up as we entered the most beautiful city I have ever been in. Bath is seriously gorgeous. The city was founded by the Romans in about 40 AD. Everything has the beautiful old architecture, and looking past the buildings you can see beautiful landscapes.
This was the first picture I took as we headed out for our tour with Andrew. He is such a great tour guide. I don't think I could do his job. He has so much information stored away. From dates to names to places, he knew everything. This isn't the only tour he does either. He has to memorize things about Scotland, France, Belgium, and Germany too. It's amazing.
He told us about the Romans who founded the city, and apparently, most of them were lazy. They spent their days at the bath houses just socializing. The water is full of iron, and they used to drink up to a gallon of it each day because it was thought to have healing powers. They also had people carry them around in little box-type seats called sedans. They could literally wake up in the morning and be carried down the stairs and through town to the baths. I feel sorry for the people who had to actually carry them. That would be a terrible job.
After walking around, we headed back toward the actual baths for our tour. On the way, we passed the Jane Austen center. She stayed in Bath for a time, so there are a lot of references to her in the town. We walked up and were taking pictures with her statue outside when a man walked out dressed in 18th century clothes. Apparently, he was supposed to be Mr. Darcy. I would have gone along with that if it weren't for the fact that he was about 50 years too old. Other people started to get pictures with him, so Sam and I decided to also. That was when we figured out he was probably drunk. We were deciding how to pose with him and he started yelling out, "Darcy in the middle!" Then, while we were trying to get a good picture, he kept bending his knees and going down, then rising back up. The whole time he was saying, "WooooOOOoooo!" I wish I had asked them to take a video instead of a picture because it was a definite highlight of the day. Our pictures are so funny because we are laughing really hard in them.
After that, we finally made it to the Roman Baths. We had to wait outside the building in a square for a while. Once we got in, we were each given audio guides to take through with us. They looked like big cell phones. For each area, you would type in the number shown and press play. It would then give you some kind of explanation or history about what you were looking at. They also had a different number for a kid's version, so Sam and I tried that out. We loved it so much, we used that version for every one after that. They were just much more entertaining.
The baths themselves were really interesting. When we first walked out above them, the view was pretty incredible. The water was below us, and Bath Cathedral was towering above us.
I have a ton of pictures from inside also. A lot of them just look like pictures of old rocks, though. It is really something you have to experience for yourself. Standing in the middle of something that dates back almost 2000 years is a really weird feeling. A few times our audio guides told us to imagine what it was like to be standing in that spot thousands of years ago. I honestly couldn't, though, because it just seemed so weird. It was an awesome place. I really would recommend it to anyone.
After touring the Baths, we headed out to find lunch. We looked around for a while, but eventually settled on Subway :) We got to walk around after that and just take in the city. We found the most amazing fudge shop I have ever been to. Ironically, it was a company called the San Francisco Fudge Factory. We saw a sign that said they shipped all over the world, so I may have to look into that. I decided to go all out. I got a piece of vanilla fudge on a stick that was dipped in chocolate then rolled in milk and white chocolate chips. It took me more that one day to eat it, and it was amazing :)
When we finished there, we headed toward the center of the city where we had seen a lot of shops. They have a great shopping area in Bath, and we spent the rest of our day going from store to store. One of my favorite parts was when we found a Disney store. I remember being so upset when the one at the mall was shut down. We all walked through and got very nostalgic looking at all the stuffed animals. I was so happy in there that I almost left with a stuffed Simba, but thankfully I talked myself out of it. (My reasoning was that it was too big, not that I didn't actually need it.) Disney has changed a little, though. I had to pretend I didn't see the Hannah Montana merchandise because it was making me angry that it was in there with my Aladdin and Belle. I want the old Disney back!
After going through a lot of nice stores, we headed back to the bus a little early. Right next to our meeting place was an old book store that we decided to check out. I fell in love with it. There were some new books, but a lot of them were old or used. The second floor had a room that was incredibly messy and disorganized, but I loved that about it. It sounded so cliche, but I kept telling everyone that it had character :)
The buses finally arrived, and we headed back to the hotel (sleeping most of the way of course). Once we got back, Sam and I were ready to crash. We didn't even leave the hotel the rest of the night. We laid in bed, watched more amazing and hilarious British television, and slept. It was a pretty uneventful night, but it was also really relaxing after two days of tours.
That about sums up day 2, so hopefully tomorrow will be the final blog from the weekend!
~Taylor
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