A Trip to Bath

The City of Bath, a World Heritage Site, is among the "must see" destinations in England. It is famous for its ancient Roman baths (1C-5C AD), its abbey, its architecture and (for its day) its innovative urban planning. We spent a beautiful sunny day there on Saturday and are happy to file the following report. Quite by accident, we found the very best parking lot for our visit...within walking distance of all the action. Our first stop was the Royal Crescent, thirty stone houses joined together in a giant arc that faces onto a great semicircular lawn with gardens beyond. Just down from that was The Circus, more stone houses but these joined in four curved sections that form a circle around a central lawn with massive trees. From there we passed by Queen Square on our way to the Roman baths. Our path took us through a busy shopping district where the streets were jammed with weekend shoppers. Bath Abbey dominates the square occupied by the baths, and its stained glass windows on such a sunny day called us inside. The thing that struck us about this church's interior was how light-filled it was. The stone itself was a creamy white, and only some of the glass was colored. The upper windows were translucent and cast much more light on the area below. From there we walked along the Avon River and across Pulteney Bridge, pictured here. Constructed in the fashion of Florence, Italy's Ponte Vecchio, the Pulteney, it was hoped, would revitalize urban shopping in its day. I don't know how it did in the late 1700's, but it sure was attracting a crowd in the early 2000's! After an afternoon stop for tea and a light meal, we made our way back to the car and home. Our neice Sara Varney has an English friend who, like her, works in the travel business. Chez had sent us, by way of Sara, a list of places to see while we're here. This trip, like the one last weekend to Portsmouth, checks off another entry from Chez's list. So far, she is batting a thousand...although a baseball reference is probably not the best given our location. At any rate, we are grateful to both Sara and Chez for helping to animate our weekends. This one was definitely a winner!