Day 4 (with fam)-6 June 2019

Today we got up early and had breakfast at our B&B.

Then we went to the roman baths. It was so cool! So much of the original roman structure is still there. They did a really great job of presenting it too. There was an audio guide which was really interesting but I was annoyed cause I fell far behind mom and dad so I was just walking around by myself. Museums are hard cause I always want to be with someone but I also don't want to talk besides pointing out interesting stuff.

It was a really extensive museum and had a whole bunch of information about the people who would've frequented the bath and the different artifacts they've found. It is a natural spring that sits on a fault line which is what heats the water naturally. The story goes that a celt found it back in the day because his pigs liked the warm mud and he realized that it was warm and there was a spring. His pigs had rheumatism or something and so did he and then after also bathing in the mud he and his pigs were cured so then it eventually became a spring and temple to a local water healing goddess of the celts and became a pilgrimage spot. Then later when the romans expanded and took over the area they built up a larger complex of the big main bath with smaller baths and piping and sauna rooms and changing rooms and altars in a square and a large temple to Sulis Minerva which is a combination of the celt goddess Sulis and the roman version of that goddess Minerva (greek Athena).

Some of the artifacts are these little pieces of metal with writing on them that tell about petty crimes against the writer who hopes that the goddess will take this note and smite the criminal responsible. There were also these tiny little glass pieces from rings and jewelry. They were really amazing cause they had the tinies little carvings in them. They were either offerings or lost in the bath.

It was really really cool.

Then we went up to the Crescent and toured the 1 Crescent apartment. It was okay. It had a cool little exhibit about people's image and how people present themselves in self portraits vs selfies which is literally what we talked about in my arth classes all the time. They also had a little booth to where old outfits and take pictures which was cute. The apartment was fully refurbished and furnished with items from this one rich guy. The crescent was originally built as a place for people to rent out for the season (either the summer season or winter season) back in the victorian era. Then over time they became disused and the facade became blackened and then this man bought it and cleaned it top to bottom and refurbished and furnished it and made it a museum and the town realized this was marketable and cleaned the whole facade of the whole crescent. It was really pretty and it had people dressed up in period clothing in each room to give information about each room and the objects.

Then we went back down to the abbey and did our food tour. We passed through the Circle street and apparently Nicholas Cage used to live there for awhile and would do local little things like light the Chirstmas tree but paparazzi got so bad he had to take the number off his house but then his house stood out cause it had no number on it lol.

The food tour was Savoring Bath and our tour guide was a local lady. First we went to the guildhall market and got 2 cheese samples from this french man. They were okay. I'm not a big cheese person. The market was really cool and I wanted to stop in the book shop to find a Harry Potter 1st edition. Then we went to this really cute french bakery and had almond croissants which were sooo goood. We bought the chocolate cookie from the store and it was yummm. Then we went to this italian store and had pesto on a cracker which was sooo good and then some sorta cured meat around burrata cheese. The cheese was good. I spoke a little italian with the lady. Then we went to another bakery where we were supposed to have a Bath Bun but the baker was sick so he didn't make anything so instead we had three little cake thingies. They were good but I was full. Then we went to this gelato place which was called Swoon and it was yummm. I had the peach grapefruit flavor. Then we went to this tea place called Comins Tea and it was really cool. We had two types of traditional tea and this lady told us all about different types of tea and the owner. The owners are a couple who love to travel and really got into tea in Asia and then they made contacts and started importing really good tea and opened this shop to sell it and sell a few food items that are paired with the tea. It was a really cool space.

Then we went back to the abbey and did the tower tour. It was super cool. It was 217 steps and we went up this tiny little spiral stair case and then across the front (right in front of the stain glass on the front) and then up more spiral stairs into the bell tower bell room. They have 10 bells there that need 10 people to ring them and our tour guide told us all about them. One of the current bell ringers is a 91 year old man who makes the climb up the stairs 2 times a week! They also have another bell ringing system where you can just pull little strings that hit little hammers against the bells which makes a quieter sound and can be done by one person. There's also a mechanical hammer thing for the bells that used to play a full song at different times of the day but all the townspeople hated it cause it was the same few songs over and over every day. Then one time on ?New Years Day? it went off at 3am and started just playing all of the songs and played until a lady was able to run over to the abbey run up all the stairs and wrenched it off the wall with a crowbar. He was a cute boy from Bath who was very energetic and could've worked at Disney honestly. He also brought us through this little hallway to the clock face which was super cool. Apparently a kid in a tour a month ago accidentally touched the clock hand to stand up and it screwed up the clock mechanism and cost the church 10,000 to fix. Then we went into this other room that was on top of the church ceiling which is crazy. It has no cement or anything holding it together and is completely held together from friction and physics. It has a little hole in the ceiling so the organ player can see down to see where the bride is during weddings and when to start the song.

Then we hiked up more spiral stairs to the roof of the tower which was crazyyy. It was really cool. We could see our B&B and also all the other stuff.

Then we went all the way back down.

Then we went over to the crescent to go to the botanical garden but we wandered around the park and couldn't find it so we headed to dinner at Chequers. Mom and I had Pimm's which was really good! It's a summer drink thats Pimm's gin with sprite and fruit floating in it. Mom and I split a risotto which was really good. I asked mom to split and she said split what and I've never been more offended.

Then we walked all the way back to our B&B. I took a shower and went to bed.