2nd Day in Bath, England…

It was interesting to wander around Bath my first evening here. And the hostel was old and quaint. A pub, restaurant and hostel all in one 3 story building. Here’s an interactive map of the street the hostel is on…Belushi’s is the building at the end of the street and on the left: Green St., Bath This street is typical of many in Bath. If you walk towards the church there at the end of the street and turn around, here’s Belushi’s…

I had the free hostel breakfast in Belushi’s the next morning. Kind of sparse but, you wouldn’t starve. Here’s a shot of the reception area that I found online. It’s probably a copyrighted picture and it’s not being used here for commercial purposes (except indirectly), but as an example of their fine establishment. If I knew who to ask, I’d get permission:

Pretty nice here, huh? In the mornings, those tables are pushed together and breakfast goodies are set on them. I tried ordering an eggs, bacon, and toast breakfast here one morning and got the same undercooked toast, bacon, and runny eggs I’ve gotten for breakfast several places in Europe. Don’t understand what the cooks in Europe have against thoroughly cooked bacon, or eggs for that matter.

I spent many hours here during my stay, and also in the other section of the bar where they’ve got overstuffed furniture. This hostel, like all the others I’d stayed at in Europe, has brochures of various excursions you can take and I could tell that first morning that I might need to stay a little longer than the 3 days I’d originally planned, because of all the cool things tourists could do I’d found presented in the brochures.

And of course Belushi’s has their own morning walking tour. Taking that gave me several leads on fun things to do or places to revisit in Bath. We visited the outside of several churches downtown, then walked by the Roman baths, a memorial park, wandered by the businesses on Pulteney bridge, and noted the tour boat next to another park beside the river. Most of our tour took us through old fashioned yet typical English streets. That was cool. I liked the fact that Bath was small enough that you could get plenty of ancient and recent history only a short walk from the hostel. Here’s a shot of open countryside off in the distance outside of town.

The walking tour took us right by the baths. This is Bath Abbey. After the tour ended, I headed back to the baths because I just had to see them today. I’d run across articles about the baths for 50 years and I couldn’t wait. It was, I hoped, going to be another highlight of my European trip.

And here you go, still percolating after 2,000 and some odd years. The Celts were probably the first to build here, taking advantage of the natural hot springs. The Romans expanded on the existing structures and infrastructure.  Then after the Romans, the church tried to take over and profit from the area. Luckily, much of the Roman structures were buried by then so they were protected from the wanton abuse the church usually approved of for ‘heretical’ history and structures. The original Roman Baths are like 4 meters below current ground level. You can’t swim in them any more. All the water you see here, comes from a hot spring inside the lower portion of the building. It exits the building and follows a Roman drainage system to the river. All that plumbing was represented in a drawing in the museum. You make your way around this upper section and soon find a tidy museum. This museum gets over a million visitors a year, but today it wasn’t to crowded. And here’s what the place looked like after the Romans got through with it in the 4th century. Looks like gold…it isn’t. Looks like silver, it isn’t. Here’s some silver. And here’s where the hot water enters the building.Then it’s channeled around the structure to the main bath, private baths, and a temple bath. It might look muddy in the picture but that’s just the color of the rock after all these centuries. The water, while not exactly pure because of minerals, is relatively colorless.  At least it’s colorless until it sits out here in the sun for a time and some harmless bacteria grow a bit. This would have happened during Roman times too, and the water is non-toxic. And here is the ancient walkway. One of the ‘tepid’ pools used to cool off after bathing in the hot water. Here’s the hot water making it’s way to the main bathing pool. It is a rather small place so it was still early afternoon when I finish my leisurely tour of the baths. I’d slowly gone around the facility 2-3 times by this point. But I could come back if I wanted so off I went to find some street vendors cart or a small cafe for a snack.   Oh, here ya go. Found this tiny pub during my stoll. Had a nice bowl of soup at the Coeur de Lion. 

I went inside to scope out this very old English pub because of that chalkboard sign saying it’s the smallest pub in Bath. It is tiny. Just enough room to turn around and not much more. Owned by a local brewery. And they have a strange name: Coeur de Lion They served my soup in a tiny bowl with a tiny spoon, tiny napkin, and tiny crackers. Tiny. And another view of Bath Abbey. Wherever people group together for strength and companionship, the charlatans won’t be far behind. It is a pretty neat building though.

So that was my first full day’s activities in Bath. I was really enjoying it so far and super happy I’d included Bath in my European itinerary. There was so much fun stuff to do!

And here’s what my room at the hostel looked like, it’s an old building, and the rooms are kind of small, but there was enough room for all of us. The cold I’d caught was creeping up on me, it had been 3 days since that girl that gave it to me had sat with me in Berlin so I wasn’t surprised. You know what they say: 3 days coming, 3 days with you, 3 days going. And that’s what was happening.

Had to swallow a mouthful of Nyquil before bed to alleviate symptoms, but it seemed that it worked overnight. At least I think it did. Sometimes your roommates won’t tell you that you kept them up all night hacking and coughing.

This is typical of the St. Chris’ dorm rooms here in Bath. When I went to bed around 10:30 PM there was only one other roomie; in the morning, all the bunks were occupied. I wasn’t all that happy with the accommodations, only because of my cold, and tried for a single room, but those were booked here the entire time I was in Bath. Since I was sick, I didn’t spend much time trying to find a different hostel. One was to far out of town, the other didn’t have very good reviews. So I stayed here at St. Chris’. Yea.

That’s all for this post. First day in Bath was a pleasure. If you get the chance, you gotta go. So much fun…and I’d say it would be fun for an entire family, though if you have kids, you might not want to stay at a hostel filled with backpackers.