A Day Trip to Bath

We finally took our first day excursion out into the country and did some touristy things. Clark and I went with the boys to Bath, England, which is located about an hour and a half west of our house. It was a beautiful drive. Rolling, green hills for almost the whole drive. We parked outside of Bath at a park & ride and took a double-decker bus into the town. The boys loved that, and would have been content to just ride the bus most of the day.

The first place we went to when we got there was the Bath Abbey. This church was originally founded in the 8th century, but was destroyed a couple hundred years later. In 1499, according to legend, Bishop Oliver King had a dream in which God told him how to rebuild the church. He demolished the ruined Norman cathedral and replaced it with the Bath Abbey. On the west front, there is a representation of the dream that the Bishop had. In the 16th century the Bath Abbey was largely destroyed again, and was later repaired. There was a major restoration of the church, although it was damaged again in a bombing in 1942 during WWII. From 1991-2000, it was completely cleaned and restored. The organ was was rebuilt in 1996-1997, and was beautiful. As you may remember from another post, Clark loves the organ and was so impressed by the organs in Prague that we now have to take a picture of all of the organs we see. Here is a picture of the organ from the Bath Abbey.

After visiting the Bath Abbey we went to the Roman Baths. Again, according to legend, it's origin comes from a Celtic named King Bladud who discovered these natural hot springs in 860 B.C. He was cast out of his kingdom as a leper and used the springs to cure himself. It was the Romans in the 1st Century who actually built baths around the hot springs. They also built a temple around them dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva, but it wasn't until the early 1700s that Bath became a fashionable spa town.

Sammy and Kimball in front of the main pool of the Roman Baths.

Our family in front of the Baths.


After we got finished with our tour of the Bath Houses, we decided to try our luck at eating out. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but we haven't had good success with eating out here. The food has not been good, and it's really expensive. There was a pizza place in the town called Pizza Express that was recommended in our book. We were a little hesistant, but decided to try it. Here are the results.

Sammy was very into his appetizer, which was a salad (cucumbers, tomatoes, & peppers) and dough balls with garlic butter.

Kimball loved the dough balls with garlic butter.

Clark had the La Reine pizza and finished the whole thing.

I had the American Pizza which is just a pepperoni pizza. It was pretty good. I was pleasantly surprised, although they told me that one pizza was only big enough for an individual. I didn't come close to finishing it. Our meal was still pretty expensive, 37 pounds (about $75), but it's the best meal we've had in a restaurant here in England so far.

After eating we got back on the double-decker bus and headed to the park & ride. It was a fun day, but we were all exhausted afterwards.