In the amount of travel opportunities that I have been blessed with during the last few years, despite them being years of academic and career related pursuits, I have realized the need for a certain balance in the kind of places I visit. 

The ‘tourist’ part of me who wants my picture clicked alongside the Taj Mahal needs to sometimes meet the ‘adventurer’ who wants to know if she has the gumption to sky dive. And both these need to calm down and let the ‘wanderer’ part of me take over sometimes; the part that believes the best way to appreciate a place, any place, is to walk along its streets and smile at its people and sample its local fare. 

Even if said fare happens to be fried bees. 

But that’s another story. 

Today’s story however, doesn’t require nerves of steel. Today’s story requires you to relax and take a walk down beautiful cobbled paths. Pause outside the most beautiful abbey and look at it while sipping hot chocolate on the street corner. Walk past majestic roman baths and marvel at the practicality and beauty of every building and well planned piece of architecture. Walk some more and come as close to Jane Austen as you could possibly hope for. And sit atop an open air double decker bus and have a charming (and wonderfully mad) tour guide make the place come alive with stories that are part fact, part legend, part lore. And, I strongly suspect, part neat bourbon… 

Welcome to Bath, UK. 

I visited Bath one weekend a few years ago, with colleagues. The bank we worked for had a few of us sent to Bournemouth, in the south of England to be trained in our respective functions. It was early January. 

 

Source FlickR - Ian Muttoo

Our first weekend in Britain, we ran off to London and had a fast paced, fun filled, on the go, unforgettable kind of weekend! The following weekend found us still reeling from the London madness and we decided we needed to go somewhere more relaxed. Especially since this was going to be a one day weekend. 

So, Bath it was. We took the train from Bournemouth. Typical English country-side beauty passed in a blur because of the speed at which the train ate up the miles to Bath. When we got to Bath it was about 1 degree Celsius. Gloves, socks and shoes and a thick jacket did the trick however. And of course, a nice ice cream cone outside the train station. There is nothing quite like killing cold with cold. 

 

Source FlickR - Carmen Seaby

We got on a tour bus which promised to take us to all the places we needed to see to experience Bath in the limited time we had.

Enter tour guide Claire. With whistle around her neck, speaker horn in her hand and the widest most welcoming smile one can hope for atop an open air bus in the freezing cold. 

 

Source FlickR - Caro's Lines

Claire was great. She took us to the ‘touristy’ places and pointed out some not so touristy ones. And she told the most delightful stories.

My favourite story was one where King William III, one time ruler of Britain, was running very low on money. So, like all good kings, he levied a bunch of taxes on his people that made no sense whatsoever…One of these was The Window Tax.

He decided that each house could have only so many windows since each home was allowed to avail of only a certain number of hours of sunlight each. People consuming more than their share of light, were tried as criminals. As the bus wound its way through the unique lemony-beige coloured buildings of Bath, one could clearly see the peculiar squares out of sync with the rest of the bricks on the old houses; the squares that were put there to close up the excess windows.

Legend has it, that this is the origin of the term ‘Daylight Robbery’. 

Windowless buildings aside, Bath which has been declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, presents some of the finest architectural sights in Europe; the heart of which is the Roman baths. Around Britain’s only hot spring the Romans built a temple and bathing complex that still flows with natural hot water. This and the surrounding ruins are beautifully preserved and it feels almost like being transported back in time; the feeling is underlined by the ‘Meet the Romans’ gimmick where costumed characters roam among the tourists making you feel decidedly overdressed despite the biting cold. 

 

Source FlickR - Carmen_Seaby

Roman Baths neatly crossed off our check-list we headed towards the town centre and were suddenly greeted by the sight of the tower of The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Bath. 

I don’t reach for my camera in places of worship. It doesn’t occur to me to do anything other than stand and stare and take in the peace and the history of the place. This Anglical church and former monastery was founded in the 7th century, reorganised in the 10th century and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th century. 

 

Source FlickR - Josh Kritzer

We stared and strolled around the majestic abbey and stared some more. It is a stunning and incredibly powerful piece of Gothic architecture. Unfortunately this was very late in the evening and the abbey was closed to visitors. But standing there with a cup of hot chocolate and good friends is a memory I’m not likely to forget in a hurry. 

Claire told us that the Jane Austen Centre was just around the corner so we ran off to look at this mini museum dedicated to Bath’s most famous resident and one of my favourite authors. The centre offers a snapshot of life during Regency times and how this beautiful city impacted Jane Austen’s life and work. There is also a gift shop at the centre offering everything from little replicas of ornaments and clothes and furniture of that time to Ms. Austen’s wonderful books. 

 

Jane Austen Museum - Source FlickR - Milenanelim

We had two more stops on our ‘must see’ list. The Royal Crescent, one of the world’s best known architectural landmarks, built between 1767 and 1775 contains 30 houses, one of which is now the Royal Crescent Hotel and another is open to public viewing. Just thinking about the Royal Crescent, lit up in that quiet darkness of a British winter evening, makes me wish I had all the photos we had clicked that day. The photos are back home in Bombay, one of them framed and sitting on my book shelf; only pride of place will do for something so very special.

 

Pulteney Bridge - Source FlickR DanieVDM

The bus tour then took us to the Parade Gardens; the best vantage point from which to view the Pulteney bridge. One of the most beautiful bridges, it is among a handful of bridges in the world with shops built into it. This bridge was built for William Pulteney by Robert Adams and was an attempt to connect central Bath to land on the other bank of the River Avon and make Pulteney’s fortune. 

The setting was incredibly romantic; and completely wasted on a group of seven hungry kids. So we ran off and got ourselves some piping hot fish and chips! 

As the saying goes, while near a Roman Bath, eat as the British do. 

We were bone tired at the end of our ‘relaxing’ day in Bath. As we made our way to the station to board our train back to Bournemouth, I realised that I had left my gloves on the tour bus. 

And despite imminent frost bite, I felt a strange satisfaction to know that I had left a part of me in Bath.