Two Saturdays ago, I took a day trip to Bath. I left Paddington station on an 8:30 train to Bath, and the weather was still cloudy with light rain falling when I arrived in Bath at 10:00. After getting my bearings and finding the Tourist Information center, I decided to go on a 2-hour walking tour of the city, as I decided this would be more entertaining than going it alone. As one might expect, the history of the city is centered around the hot springs, which are the only such springs in the UK. Since people attributed healing powers to the water, the town has been a popular tourist destination off and on since Roman times. Queen Mary of Modena (wife of James II of England) bathed in the waters, and finally gave birth to a male heir in 1688; however, the Glorious Revolution occured later that year, in which the Catholic James II was overthrown. William IV, Prince of Orange (who married Princess Anne, daughter of George II) bathed in the waters in 1734 and his health improved dramatically. A small circular garden in Bath (the "Orange" Grove) was named in his honor, and an obelisk was erected using public funds. Beau Nash, who was the leader of the city's elite, chose to levy a tax on the city to pay for the obelisk, rather than use private funds from the wealthy visitors. Nash served as the Master of Ceremonies in Bath from 1704 until his death in 1761. He was basically the "fashion police" for the entire city, keeping a tight reign on the city's appearance to create the proper atmosphere for the members of high society who visited the baths in the city center.

At one point while I was on the tour, shortly before noon, I looked down and saw a large, white spot on my pants, near the knee. My first reaction was frustration, especially knowing that paper towels are hard to come by in most restrooms in the UK, due to their greater environmental sensitivity, so I would probably have the bird droppings on my pants for the rest of the day. My next reaction was one of great relief, realizing that if I had been half a stride further, my predicament would have been far worse. I eventually found paper towels at the pub where I ate dinner, but that was about 6 hours later. While on the walking tour, I did learn some intersting trivia about several of the green spaces in Bath. The Circus, which is a ring of Georgian row houses built in the 1760s, has small acorns adorning the front edge of the roofs. As the legend goes, King Bladud (the father of King Lear) was studying in Athens, around 860 BC, when he contracted leprosy. Feeling that an imperfect ruler could not take the throne, upon his return to England he diguised himself as a pig herder. He herded the pigs around the valley of the River Avon, looking for acorns, and the pigs contracted leprosy from him. When they arrived at the hot springs now known as Bath, legend says that the pigs rolled around in the hot mud and were cured of their leprosy. King Bladud saw this miracle, and likewise rolled around in the mud and was cured. Thus the the acorns were place on the roofs to remind people of the legend. The houses in The Circus are quite expensive: Nicholas Cage recently purchase one that used to be a nursing home, to the tune of £4 million. Another green space, that inside the Royal Crescent, has a unique place in history. It was here, in 2003, that the Three Tenors gave their final concert together, to celebrate the the opening of the Thermae Bath Spa, which didn't actually open until 2006, due to project delays. Bathing has been forbidden in the old Roman Baths since 1978, when a girl swallowed some of the water and died five days later from amoebic meningitis. While the Roman baths are clearly the highlight of a visit to the city, and are spectacular considering that all of the plumbing is Roman, visitors are sternly warned to not even touch the water, lest someone else become sick from the water. This is a bit ironic, considering the miraculous, healing powers that were once attributed to the water.

During the afternoon, I also had time to visit the local abbey. Bath Abbey is constructed on the site of an old Norman cathedral, which was completed in 1156, but fell into disrepair and was ruined by 1499. The Norman catheral was so large that it could have contained the current abbey inside its nave. A smaller abbey was under construction in 1539, when Henry VIII dissolved all of the monasteries in England in concentrate his power as the supreme head of the Church of England. The townspeople stripped the unfinished abbey of all its lead, iron, glass, and anything else of value. In 1574, Queen Elizabeth set up a national tax to pay for the restoration of the abbey. Today, visitors are led on tours to the top of the bell tower. On the tour, I saw the ringing room, where the 10 bell-ringers can play for as long as 2-3 hours for events such as coronations. I got to see the bells themselves, 7 of which date from 1700. The top of the tower provided a breathtaking, panoramic view of the city.