Bath

Back in July Mum and I went to Bath for the day. We went to the Abbey and the Roman Baths. The abbey was really good. It was pretty much like any ancient abbey with an impressive nave, magnificent west window and effigies around the place. My favourite window was one showing the crowning of king Edgar. I don’t really know much about him but I think he was king a long time ago.
After the abbey we went to the Baths. It was good, but very expensive. I’d recently read a book called ‘The Economic Naturalist’ by Robert Frank. It was all about why things cost what they do and why we pay more for certain things than others. It made me think about the cost of the Baths and why they were so high when it didn’t seem to have changed that much since I went there with school over a decade ago. I think it’s because it’s a huge tourist attraction which is internationally famous and full of overseas tourists. If you’ve paid £700 to get to Bath then £12 or however much it was isn’t really that much. It just sucks if you’re a local!
Anyway, now I’ve had my rant about expensive tourist attractions I’ll get on with what we saw! The first bit you get to see is the main bath. It’s a famous site and looks just like all the photos (surprisingly enough!). The baths were part of a huge complex with temples and plazas as well as the baths. One of the temple pediments was found and has a fantastic head as the centre.

The baths were richly decorated and had fantastic mosaics. One of my favourite sections was this seahorse:

When I studied Latin one of the textbooks we used had a chapter on the baths. We got to translate some curses that were written on lead tablets and thrown into the sacred pool. The originals were written in reverse which was thought to make the curse more powerful. I really find it incredible that something so personal and private survived for so long.

I did like the Baths but felt that it was too crowded and too expensive. All in all, though, Bath itself was really good and we did have a good time.