Trip to Bath

On Thursday, April 8 we traveled to Bath from London. We decided to go to Bath because of its Roman ruins, its ties to Jane Austen, and its museum dedicated to William Herschel.

The train trip, although a bit on the pricy side, is lovely. Get to Paddington Station, find a ticket machine that actually works..., stroll over to the appropriate track and find a seat.

We were in a Quiet Carriage where conversations are supposed to be, you know, quiet, and cell phones are supposed to be prohibited. Of course, we chose seats near a group that were talking loudly and using their cell phones non-stop.

That small irritation aside, the trip takes about 90 minutes to travel about 120 miles. The seats are comfortable and the coaches are, conversations and cell phones notwithstanding,

Bath is built on 7 hills, like Rome, but the similarities end there. Bath became a popular destination for the British well-to-do to take in the warm baths and to be where the social elite congregated. As as result the hills are dotted with strings of two and three-story rowhouses built with locally-quarried limestone.

The train station is in the middle of town and you walk up to the Roman baths built in 60 AD. It is odd to see these enormous, starkly Georgian buildings rising above the green hills. Not what an American is used to seeing. The photo is of the primary square leading into the baths and the Abbey, which dates to only 1490.