We first visited Bath about 20 years ago with Kate, so our return, staying for just a little over a full day, was fairly nostalgic. But we had liked the city, which has a lot of charm, the first time—including a must-see attraction, a charming abbey and some good food—so we went back to see how it had changed.
Bath is built around a hot spring that was an attraction back with the caveman. This thing bubbles up nice and toasty, and on those cold winter nights, it was probably just the thing for a prehistoric hot tub experience. When the Romans got there they turned the place into a major operation, and what you see now is the archeological remains of that Roman operation. And it is huge. You expect to go down and see maybe some bubbly water and a rock or two, but this thing has been excavated for decades and has all the latest scientific techniques going for it, so you really get a sense of what it was like (even more than when we were last there 20 years ago, at which point it was already mind-blowing). England is dotted with pieces of old Roman detritus, and you can’t swing a cat without hitting the original wall of something or other, but this is like finding half a city and walking through it. You can kill a whole morning working your way through it. And, of course, the spring is still there and bubbling away. I didn’t bother going for my complimentary free taste; I smelled it last time, and that once was enough. Them there bubbles is chemicals, folks. Good for what ails you? Maybe, but not my cup of tea, thank you very much.
Since Jane Austen lived in Bath for a while, if you’re a fan you can visit her house there (I think it's her house and not just a recreation—I didn’t go in, not that I’m not a fan but, honestly, it’s just some old house, and I’d rather read the books). Outside of it there are people all dressed in full bonnet drag, if that’s your fancy. Mostly I kept muttering to myself various comic turns on “It is a universal truth,” because I couldn’t avoid it no matter how hard I tried. (Unlike looking for a Cheshire cat chapeau in Oxford, on the other hand, I assure you that I was not seeking out any Mr. Darcy tee shirts or anything.) You can also walk around and see some lovely 18th Century architecture, and if you cross the river and hike up the open land on the other side, you can get a fantastic view of the whole vista of the place. That’s the nice thing about countries older than the US: you see things that have been around for a while, relatively unchanged.
The abbey in Bath is also memorable for me for two reasons. First, the ladders to heaven that flank the front doors, with angels climbing up and down, and second, the remarkable stain glass windows telling, on the one side, Old Testament stories, and on the other, New Testament. Apparently the difference between an abbey and a cathedral (which this would seem to qualify as, if one were to go by size alone) is the association of the latter with a bishopric. You learn something new every day.
One thing we couldn’t figure out was how the canals we both distrinctly remember walking along twenty years ago have disappeared. It’s one thing to have a faulty memory, but to have a shared faulty memory is rather frightening. At the end of our sole full day we rediscovered a restaurant we had eaten at lo those many years ago, and it was high end then and it was high end now. Good, classy grub! They also had a window where you could watch the cooks plating the food, trying unsuccessfully for a couple of minutes to stick a pressed beet shaped like a stick of chewing gum into a meatball shaped out of duck confit (which I had eaten—unbelievable!).
Visit Bath? It’s not too far out of London (nor was Oxford) if that’s your starting point, and either can be a day trip (although more is better). I’d say the place is definitely worth a full day, once every twenty years or so. Which, from me, is high praise.
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