Roman Baths and an Abbey Too

Libby's life, if she were to tell the story of us at a museum, is her moving on while I spend inordinate amounts of time at each thing one can look at, and then taking a dozen pictures of that one thing.

This is neither entirely true, nor entirely false. The point is, she (and my father) suffered greatly today for waiting so patiently for me to see what I want at my pace. In short, they deserve a vacation from my vacation. 

Today we went to the Roman Baths. The religious day-spa since time immemorial. The place where you show off to others with your fancy oils, and obscenely large cleaning retinue. The place where you get your bathing cloak stolen, and then have your scribe deposit a curse to Minerva about that Philisia stealing your cloak (you just know it) and passing it off as her own.

Today though, the baths were full of normal folks, small children, and women who should not be trying to---why are you wearing such high heels on these old paving stones! Don't you know you can break your ankle doing that?! And us. 

We love the Roman Baths. If you've read previous travel blogs you know we love Roman stuff generally. There is something special about this place though. It's geography and geology create such a unique setting that both native Britains and Romans could not help themselves but be drawn to and find meaning here. Maybe it's Minerva. Maybe it's that metric ton of sestertii that you made on those temple priests that needed a cow at the last minute. The point is, there is evidence of folks traveling here and dying here from all over the empire. From Belgians, to Gallic soldiers, to Syrians (or a least one), all were drawn to the edge of the world for some reason or another to make a living and find fulfillment. 

A curse/complaint

Description of the curse/complaint

Sulis Minerva

Overflow drain

Cold plunge pool (I'm pretty sure.....)

The Sacred Spring, this is the spring that feeds the baths

Ugh, what was all that pompous nonsense?

When we were finished at the Baths (after Libby found Tommy and shepherded him along), we went to Bath Abbey.  Memory is a funny thing, the Abbey somehow felt--smaller? But still beautiful. We of course did the tower tour (yes, we have a problem) where we learned mostly about Bath Abbey's bells and some interesting anecdotes about said bells. 

 

For dinner we went to The Raven. This is where we had our first meal on our honeymoon. Dinner was even better than we remembered! Steak and ale pie with ale and onion gravy. Heaven.