July 30: Anybody care for a bath? Tea? Music?

The initial plan for Thursday was for everybody to go to Bath, but Darrin and Susie made it a free day…Kylee, Megan, Amanda, Julia, and I went to Bath anyway. And I’m so glad we did. We went to the Roman Baths first, which were really interesting. We did an audio tour so we listed to the history behind different parts of the bath house and temple while we were walking through it. It’s really fascinating that people came up with things that ingenious that long ago. To the left is a model of the building and the water system. The way the water is pulled through the buildings and the drainage systems were absolutely incredible. It was definitely simple and basic, but almost modern in the way it worked. It was just done in a different way than using electricity, but basically the same concept. The baths consisted of a temple and the bath house. The temple was dedicated to the Goddess Minerva. The bath house consisted of the main bath, smaller baths, a chilled bath, and changing and waiting rooms. Although women and men would bathe together, there were separate changing rooms. Some of the baths were meant for healing, so people with all different kinds of ailments would share the same bath. The patrons believed in the healing powers of the baths because all of the water came from the sacred spring that they believed to be blessed by the Gods. The water in the main bath is still from the same system of water that the Romans originally used. Seeing the Roman baths was probably my favorite part of all of the Roman history we’ve seen on the trip…except for the Coliseum.
When we bought our tickets into the baths, we bought the ticket that included the Fashion Museum. However, the museum is not in the same place as the baths, so we had to walk through town to get to it (that was really only about 10 minutes, it’s a pretty small town). The Fashion Museum was so awesome. It was really small, but so cool. They had collections of classic gowns and suits. They had one dress where the hips were about 6 feet wide. There was also a collection of dresses of the year from about the past 20 years. Some of them were absolutely hideous, but most of them were really pretty. One of my favorite parts of the museum was the dress up area. They had corsets and wire skirt frames that we got to try on. We all got dressed up and took pictures. It was a little ridiculous but a lot of fun. The museum also had a special collection called The Supremes. The collection was just what it sounds like; collections of costumes worn by the Supremes. It was such a good collection. Besides, the costumes, they also had boards and screens with little bits of history about the group and the time period, as well as information on black rights movements.
After the museum, we went over to the Jane Austen Center. Jane Austen lived in the city of Bath for a while, so they have dedications to her all over the place. At the center, there were men dressed like Jane Austen’s time period outside, so we stopped and took pictures with them. We went inside through the gift shop, but didn’t go through the actual center. It wasn’t her actual home, it was just a home dedicated to her, and it was a little pricey so we skipped it. After the gift shop, we went up stairs to the restaurant and had an official tea party with tea, finger sandwiches, crumpets, scones, and cake. Kylee and I split the meal called ‘Tea With Mr. Darcy’, which included little cucumber and cheese finger sandwiches, two scones with clotted cream, two different kinds of tea, and two pieces of cake. The sandwiches, tea, and scones were really good (for me anyway, Kylee wasn’t a fan of the tea), but I didn’t like the cake too much. We got one slice of carrot cake, which I usually like, but didn’t, and we also decided to try the Victoria sponge cake (it’s really common here), which I didn’t like either. It’s a regular sponge cake with fruit and cream through the center. I liked it better than the carrot cake, but neither one was very good. But it was still really fun to have a tea party! All of us had to be back in London by about 6 for shows, so after our food, we hurried (literally ran) back to the train station to barely catch the train at 4:13. We got there 1 minute and 20 seconds before it left.
When we got back to London, Julia and I ate a small dinner really quick and then left to go to Les Miserables. We were running a little late (and I thought we were running really late because I saw a clock that was about 10 minutes fast), so when we got off the metro we jogged to the theater. We made it about 15 minutes before the show started though. We had side view seats so part of the stage was blocked, but our seats weren’t bad for what we paid. Les Mis was so amazing! It was really powerful and moving; both Julia and I cried. I still think that Wicked was more entertaining overall, but Les Mis was definitely worth seeing. I loved it and would strongly suggest it to anyone who has not seen it. Now I just have to read the book…