Here we are arriving in Bath and looking for the Visitor's Center. Have you noticed that we always visit the Visitors Center before going anyplace. We love the free maps! They also give good advise of what to see and sometimes even special deals that are out there. (Writing abouot special deals. When we went to the train station we went to the counter to get our tickets( we always go in a group) and we had bren told it would cost us 8 pounds to go to bath. Well he looked at us, very closely, and made the determination that perhaps we were over 60 and we were all traveling together which made us eligible for a special fare which was less tha 4 pounds per person. Yippee! Extra money for food and drink :-)!)
Back to our arrival and trip to the visitor's center.
Here everyone is posing for a picture. Oh Ginger is looking at her map because we must find the visitors Center.
And we do!
Then we had some of the collection: This one being the head of Minerva! There was a commentary by Bill Bryson that was available on the audio tour and his comment about this was something along the line: You look at a statue of a Roman man and you coud see yourself going to the bar with him and hanging out, you look at the statue of a Roman woman and that's the farthest thing from your mind. Why did they have to make the women so horrible looking! Leave it to Bill!
After leaving the Center we parted ways and Ginger and JoAnne visited the Herschel Museum of Astonomy which is dedicated to the achievements of the Herschel's who were distinguished astronomers as well as talented musicians. In 1781 William discovered the planet Uranus. Sharon and I elected to visit the Roman Bath. An audio guide was provided, and they have a wonderful display of Roman artifacts and other collections . I will say a great deal has been done since that visit over 22 years ago. It always amazes me when I see what the Romans were able to build. This bath is no exception. Of course th healing waters were there but they used them to build pools, sauna's, steam rooms. They were lavish.
The warm healing waters.
The cold plunge!
Tiles that retained the heat to keep the sauna hot!
The four of us met up for lunch and went to the famous Sally Lunn house which is the oldest house in Bath - 1482 and enjoyed a lunch which included her famous bun's. A lot of bread!
After lunch we waddled over to the Abby and had a look around. Bath Abbey is a parish church which once was the great church of a diocese, the area of a bishop's authority. In 757AD Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons,grants land at Bath to the monks of St. Peter. In 1499 the Norman Cathedral was in ruins and the present Abby church was built to replace it. In 1539 thr Bath Abbey was surpressed, site sold and building largly destroyed. In 1611 Abbey was reroofed and fully repaired.
After our visit to the Abbey we decided to visit the Jane Austin Museum. After that visit we all decided it was one to be missed! The t9ur started out with a very good dialogue about Jane Austin's life and rapidly deteriorated from there. It did manage to help pass the time between lunch and tea.
Guess who?
There happens to be a gentleman who stands at the door who is dressed like Mr. Darcey, hardly Colin Firth, to greet everyone. As I was leaving apparently I said something and this man grabbed me and asked if I had called him "darling". He repeated it twice because I was so stunned by the question I was at a loss for words. I finally responded " I hardly think so "! I wanted to tell himm I had already a couple of gentlemen much more to my taste.
Stanley Stag and
Bicycle Bob. Bicycle Bob's a little boney for me but I like his athleticism.
Unfortunately for me JoAnne found Stanley attractive also so we both deided to just give him up for the sake of friendship!
Now we could eat - we found a llittle patisserie and enjoyed tea or coffee and a sweet!
It was pretty much time to head back so we took a brief walk around the city along the river and listened to the music playing from the park as we headed back to the train station.
And so ended our first visit to Bath!
We returned home after walking 11,376 steps by my pedometer.
After that we decided we could just go home and relax.
It was about at this point we found in the closet a clothes rack. We were like kids in a toy store. I know it doesn't sound like such a big deal but it was nice to hang things up all in one place and not all over the house.
Before:
After:
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