Back to the Baths

Regarding Sunday, June 4.

I have so far left out one of our Bath days ( or the larger part of it). This was the day when we visited the Roman baths and had tea (lunch) at the Pump Room. So I'll get that off my to-do list tonight. And, because I'm now going to be doing more time jumping as we go along, I'll add at the beginning the date about which I'm writing. We're now so far beyond what you're reading about that this may help me , as well as you, keep track of where we are. For instance, we leave Sarlat la Caneda and head to Girona, Spain for a couple of days. We've already left Paris far behind us. So let's take one last jump back to Bath, and then tomorrow I'll tackle our second day in Amsterdam.

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We were scheduled for a bright and early visit to the Roman baths, so we entered at 9:00, and were really glad we did that. This experience is so well and thoroughly done that three hours passed in a flash.

I know that many of you have made this journey to the Roman baths, but I must say this is a spectacular job of discovery, restoration, and education. To have found this site in the first place must have been exciting beyond words. But it's equally amazing that when the baths were found, enough people knew how historically important they were and sought to begin a preservation process that made possible what we see today.

This is one of the best laid out presentations I've seen. They move an incredible number of people through the place, but it seldom feels like you're being treated like a sardine inside a canning factory. And what we saw was pretty breathtaking. The first surprise I got was when I realized we were walking by the baths constantly--and that the current street level is so much higher than the "ground level " of the baths.

This is already a set of memories half-buried under an additional ten days of experiences. So I think it's best that I keep this (relatively) short on verbiage, give you a good link to the website for the Roman baths, and give you a few photos just to entice you to make plans to visit this UNESCO World Heritage Site--and then I'll wrap it up with our proper tea.

There is a full walkthrough of the exhibit on this website, as well as other interesting details:

https://www.romanbaths.co.uk/

And here are some of the more powerful and/or fun images from that day's visit:

This is one of the first views after cimgvoit from the introductory foyer. That of course is the Bath Abbey in the background. It's clear this area has always been the heart of Bath, from the time of the Romans to present day.

This is the goddess Sulis Minerva. Her name was a combination of the Celtic Sulis for which these hot springs had already been named and Minerva, a Roman goddess. The Romans would normally have placed the name Sulis after Minerva, but apparently this goddess was quite important.

An effective way to fill out what archeologists believe fragments were part of. (Sorry about the grammar there.)

A pan shot I took of the bath.

Cindy had a laugh with the Roman guys.

And I had a moment with them too

We spent a full three hours in this place, but then had to leave for tea at the Pump Room, for a taste of what it might have been like in Georgian times when Bath was the place for finding spouses during the summer season.

Unfortunately, I neglected to take photos of the tea sandwiches and the tiered plate of pastries both savory and sweet. However, I did find a terrible faux pas on one of my sandwiches--a crust, of all things...

What!!!??? A crust?????

We had a front row seat for the pianist, who seemed to have every kind of music memorized.

I loved the way the fan behind him flipped up the back of his hair.

Oh, and of course we tasted the water from the spring;

After tea, we went to an afternoon evensong at the Abbey, so we were finally able to see the inside of that place.

How could you not feel the presence of some higher being in a place like this? I think Sulis Minerva would feel right at home here.

Very Important People have Very Important Crypts here. Many less important people also are buried beneath the stones in the church's floor.

There. I think we've now done Bath. But I'll leave this place with a not-so-final note about that beautiful golden-hued limestone. Bath is not the only region where that has been used as the primary building material. I'll have more to say about that in a later chapter.