In which Katelyn visits Bath, eats some unusual ice cream, goes antiquing, and plays Mad Libs

The Great Bath, the centrepiece of the Roman Baths

On Saturday we visited Bath, one of the oldest cities in the UK. When the Romans invaded what is now modern-day Britain, they built elaborate spas and temples here. Bath is built over the only hot spring system in Britain, which supplies the spas with naturally warm water. The city's original name was Aquae Sulis because the Romans found that the native people livng around Bath worshipped a goddess of the hot springs named Sulis. They combined Sulis with their own goddess Minerva and built a temple and statue to her. The statue's head can be seen when you go through the Roman Baths exhibit.

Even with an £11 entrance fee, the Roman Baths exhibit is well worth the money. The exhibits are very well-done, with limited text, an engaging audio guide, numerous artifacts, screened projections of actors dressed as Romans, and living history actors who were approachable and informative. I was a little skeptical of the screened projections at first when I saw a poster for them, but I thought they were a nice touch. It's easy to forget that the Romans were flesh and blood people who had jobs, families, and friends and who loved dressing in bright colours and painting their temples even more brightly, since all we have left of them are bleached temple ruins and statues. The projections helped me visualize the people who would have walked through the spas and imagine what their lives were like, which is really the ultimate goal of any good museum.

Visit the Roman Baths yourself here: http://www.romanbaths.co.uk/

Look at how big the Royal Crescent is!

After we left the Roman Baths, we made our way over to the Royal Crescent, an eighteenth century example of fine Georgian architecture. It was a fashionable address to have in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries and was a popular place for distinguished retirees to spend their golden years. People still live in some of the houses today, but many of them have converted into offices. There is also a hotel and museum located in the Crescent.

Pulteney Bridge, with weir

We moved on to see Pulteney Bridge, one of only two bridges in Europe to contain a shopping arcade. It is another beautiful example of Georgian architecture. Standing on the bridge, you can look down into the River Avon and its weir. We were sure to take plenty of pictures before grabbing some ice cream at a small shop in the shopping arcade. Three of us split three scoops of ice cream between us and we each chose an unusual flavour which was either rare or nonexistent at our homes in the US and Hong Kong. So, we ended up with a delicious combination of blackcurrant, honeycomb, and rum raisin, a perfect finish to a great day in one of England's most beautiful cities.

Ice cream!

Sunday was a bit of a miserable day due to the weather, but we enjoyed our Sunday roast at the Ship Inn, a sixteenth century pub that Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake enjoyed for its drinks and tavern wenches. After that we went antique shopping and I picked up a small piece of Exeter china from the turn of the nineteenth century, right around the start of WWI. I also picked up four antique postcards. After having wrote a number of postcards myself, I couldn't help but wonder if they will end up in an antique shop one hundred years from now and some tourist like myself will pick it up and wonder about the person who wrote it and the person they were writing to.

We ended the day with dinner at Holland Hall and a rather bawdy game of Mad Libs. Many of my international friends had never heard of Mad Libs before, but they were soon as addicted as I was when we started playing it (if you're unfamiliar with Mad Libs - look it up and start playing)! Some of them made us laugh so hard we started practically crying. It was a great end to the day.

I'll be heading off to St. Ives on Wednesday. Thanks for reading!