The Exchange Experience: Destination 7 : Bath-Spa, United Kingdom

Date of Visit: 29 August 2011

As the name suggests, this place was a place where people would go for a bath and spa. Ancient people to be exact. The main town itself does not have much attractions or exciting stuff. Just normal gardens and rivers. It's a pretty small town. But FYI: UNESCO added the city of Bath as a Cultural Site to its Word Heritage List in 1987.

One of the attractions listed on the website is this circus, which is a row of houses:

This is another attraction, which is the Royal Crescent. It is a large semi-circular structure.

And this is the Bath Abbey, i think (lol):

Here are some interesting sights:

Left: Mineral Water Hosiptal

Right: It's some photography exhibition around the city. The one shows penguin fighting. I personally thought they were doing some "bro" shit, tapping the chest. Haha

Finally, the main attraction of the city of Bath, the Roman Bath! This was a significant site as the bath was the only one built in the UK, and it was a very sacred place with temples and plazas and huge public baths. Actually, it's the only place in UK with hot springs!

It used to be huge compound, but years of neglect after the Romans left had caused most of the buildings to collapse. What we see on the outside now is actually modern buildings.

The real ground level and buildings/ruins are actually below the modern street level. So we have to go inside the museum to take a look, tickets cost GBP10.50 for students. The museum tells us about the history and story of the Roman bath site, rebuilding the ruins and showing us the lives of the people then.

There was actually 2 pools, one which was dedicated to the Roman goddess Minerva (photos below). It was an enclosed pool, and was thought to be hot and steamy inside, thereby adding to the mystery of the goddess.

The water from the goddess pool will then flow into the public pool in another building. It was supposed to be a very big structure with high ceilings. The ancient people thought that the water had healing powers and will help them to cure illnesses.

(some statues around the pool)

(photos along the pool)

(more pool photos)

There was an audio guide that comes with the museum ticket. JianHui and I got bored and started to do stupid things, like touching the water(not supposed to) and these:

There is a place called the pump room where we can taste the spring water (photo below). It smelled like rotten eggs(sulphur) and tasted very heavy of iron. It supposedly has 53 types of minerals in it, hmmm...