Bathking in glory

The plan was to have a little more to report this week, because I wanted to see Patrick Stewart in MacBeth Saturday night. Unfortunately, waiting to buy tickets until the morning of a show is not a good way to actually see the said show.

Shakespear had to wait, but the week’s other fun didn’t. Friday we hopped on board a coach bus outside Faraday House and took the three hour drive to Bath. That’s the city of Bath, not a cleaning. Fortunately, the showers work in London, so I don’t need to ride for 180 minutes to rinse off.

Bath is one of the more famous cities in England, next to London of course. It was started in Roman times because a geological fault leads to hot water escaping the ground. The Romans, being lovers of public bathing houses, harnessed the steamy goodness of the earth with a complex that included multiple pools and a temple to the Goddess they attributed to providing them with the warm H20.

After several hundred years and the Roman’s withdrawal from England, the public bath houses were basically built over. By the time Royalty was building another bathing house on the site in the 1800s, the city was about 14 feet higher than it had been due to a natural phenomenon where urban areas actually gain altitude because they basically build on their own refuse. Eventually, the old baths were discovered in astoundingly good condition, considering they had been buried for hundreds of years.

They were in such good shape that the baths are still watertight and the water still flows through the Roman’s channel system properly. The sight’s original temple is gone, and the bathing houses no longer have their impressive roofs, but the floors, walls and columns are still largely there.

Walking around something so old is always interesting, but walking around something so old that is still basically in working order is even better. Because there are no roofs to the bathing houses algae grows in the water and makes it green, and you can no longer go into the baths because we understand the hazards of untreated water and lead pipes, but for all intensive purposes Bath could still be bathing. We spent about two hours in the Baths and accompanying museum sucking up all of the information we could from the telephone-like self-guided audio tours.

Once those were exhausted, we walked around the accompanying tourist trap for the remaining two hours of our stay. Marks and Spencer, H&M and all the usual stores were there, trying to snatch our money. For some reason, Deb had a hankering for some hot chocolate, and dragged me into a chocolate café up the beaten path.

I shouldn’t make it sound like it was a mistake to go, although afterwards my stomach certainly screamed that it was. I got toffee hot chocolate, which was just what it sounds like. Deb got “Chocolate Indulgence,” which was basically hot chocolate poured over chocolate ice cream. The ice cream melted and rose to the top, making a drink rich enough that I was glad to be drinking my simple thick hot chocolate with toffee syrup.

Oh, did I mention that my sweet-toothed girlfriend suggested that we get some mousse, too? I had chocolate orange moose, while Deb just had chocolate mousse. Well, she ordered raspberry chocolate mousse, but the clerk made a mistake. On top of all that, each order got a complimentary raspberry crème piece of chocolate.

It took quite some time to make it through all that since it was so rich, so it was then time to get on the bus. I was glad, since I felt a little sick and really did not want to walk much. Our tour guide drove us through some of the nice sights of the city, which has buildings that are all made of limestone that oddly bears a color and texture akin to sandstone.

Outside of the city, at the top of a large hill, we could see far enough to glimpse the mountains that mark the beginning of Wales. I don’t think we’ll be making it to Wales in the next month, but at least we saw it.

On the three hour bus ride home, I started a Soduku in the Daily Metro. It was the first time I’ve ever done any of the puzzles, and I can now say that I hate them. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time on two puzzles, in two days now, and I’ve managed to screw them each up beyond repair. It was Deb’s suggestion that I start one, so I blame her for my trouble.

That about raps up the Bath recap. Next week I’ll be able to write about Oxford, and hopefully MacBeth.