it's bath time!

 the crew for the weekend (pete, lisa, jerome and myself)

the bath abbey

bath is a beautiful town almost directly west of london and accessible by train in 1.5 hours.  it is a town that has natural hot springs where the ancient romans settled and built many bath houses which is how it got its name.  since 1987 it's been a unesco world heritage site so that's how you know it's definitely worth seeing :)

the flatmates (pete & lisa), jerome and i headed there this two weekends ago because it was about time that we ventured outside of london to see what else the uk had to offer.  we ventured to the paddington train station very early in an attempt to catch our 7am train out minus some minor eff ups that happened along the way.

the ticket machine outside the station decided not to print off the tickets, so with about 10 minutes left, we thought we'd be fine printing at another machine.  wrong.  we were rejected again at another machine with now about 6 minutes before the train departs.  we were at the complete opposite end of the platform so the guy working gives us the route we needed to run, so we took off for the ticket office.  inside the ticket office, i got some flack from the ticket man because i'm trying to tell him politely that we need these tickets now since the train is leaving but he doesn't get a damn.  he wrote out our 4 tickets and now we had about 2 minutes to sprint onto the train.  did i mention at this point it's only lisa, pete and i?  where was jerome?

jerome was so kind as to text us when we were training there to ask if we wanted any coffee because he was already at the station and that he was at the mcdonalds.

so after getting the piece of paper that was our 'ticket' the last piece of the puzzle was finding jerome. that is precisely when i received call from him saying 'i've made a really big mistake...i'm at the victoria station.'  we were waiting for him at the paddington one...hahahaha.  luckily trains depart every 30 mins to bath so we waited for jerome to get to the station then off we went!

we started our morning off with a walking tour led by these honorary guides.  i learned that nicolas cage at one point owned a house there.  many of the buildings also had soot on them because they primarily used coal for a long time to heat.  what else...oh, not all of the houses had bathrooms in them, so sometimes they would build a bathroom shed type thing and attach it to the side of a house. that would literally be my worse nightmare to be going #2 then falling through the floor of this little bathroom shack. the guide said it has yet to happen, but still!

 the metal square in the ground is actually a hole where they used to store coal

 the use of coal has left the buildings quite dirty though nothing that running some water down can't take care of!

 

 the royal crescent

 can you spot the bathroom??? (hint: It is gray and shingle-y looking)

we also visited the star pub in bath that has been unchanged for the last 100 years!  i loved it.  dark and dingy with a few small rooms that were connected with seating.  there were lots of old english men there just chilling which is a sign of a good pub.  we had a quick drink there then headed to the roman bath house.

the bath house was a tourist zoo but i'm glad i saw it.  it's been there for so long!  we're talking like 60AD or something crazy. the romans also took their baths very seriously.  they had a series of rooms with pools at different temperatures that you would move through.  everything was just so grand and built with such beautiful detail i was in awe walking around.

 there were so many asian tourists.  i had to.

the coolest thing that jerome and i saw were these 'curses' carved in tablet that people had written to the goddess minerva because someone wronged them at some point.  most of the curses were inscribed in latin but they had this one which was they think was british celtic, which would be the only example ever of it, so it couldn't be translated!

after that we met up with we met up with pete and lisa at a bath!  we couldn't leave without experiencing one.  we went here.  it was pricey but worth it.  they had pool on the roof where you got views of the abbey which was just unreal!  we had 2 hours so moved around from pool to pool and from steam room to steam room.  sadly the mint and eucalyptus one was out of order that day but the others were nice.

refreshed and ready for dinner!

the next day we went to bristol since it was nearby.  bristol is one of the larger cities in the uk so it had a much different vibe than bath.  it was raining that day so that also made sightseeing a little less fun.  bristol is a port town and home of the ss. great britain now!  that ship's use changed throughout time from bringing immigrants to australia to carrying coal and eventually was just a storage warehouse when it ended up in the falkland islands.  you could actually walk around the ship and see the different decks which was cool.  the cabins and size of the beds were tiny!  you were basically in a coffin with no lid.

 the underbelly of the ship!  we were below the water level.  this is the best solution they've come up with to preserve the ship and prevent rust from developping.

after that we hiked up a hill (with out luggage) to the clifton suspension bridge which sits above the avon river.  i don't think there's really anything significant to learn about the bridge but it was nice to look at.  we walked across it and back since it's only 400m long.  on the wikipedia page it said that in 1885, there was a girl who tried to commit suicide by jumping but since she had a skirt on, it acted as a parachute and she survived! 

soon it was time to head to the train station to make our way back to london and come to terms that the weekend would be over soon.