Our trip to Bath this week was incredibly memorable, not only as an ancient Roman site that once again set my anthropologist/archaeologist heart aflutter, but as a charming, slightly tourist-trappy town. The site of the Roman baths themselves was incredibly fascinating to walk through. I loved seeing all the different artifacts that have been found around this site, such as the different tomb markers and the many curses left at the site for the gods. Those curses in particular were a great read, containing a lot of insight into the kind of place these baths and the significance it held as a gathering place for many. The curses mostly spoke about thievery, cursing individuals who stole pots and cloaks and jewelry. There was even one that discussed how a slave was taken from the baths, and I took note of that one as, rather than giving just a generic curse upon the thief as many of the others did, went on to list the names of people the slave’s master suspected had taken them.
Apart from seeing the material history of this site, walking through the ruins and remnants of what once was a roman bathhouse inspired its own sense of awe and wonder. For most of the tour, we were walking through modern exhibits, with displays for the architectural ruins left behind, but further into the tour, you get to see the larger foundations that were still intact, and even get to walk on the actual stones themselves, stepping through ancient steam rooms and gymnasiums and changing rooms, none of which had been used for almost thousands of years. The architectural history and remains of the site were magnificent, such as how you could see the columns that would have held up the mosaic floors of the rooms and allowed for fires and coals to be lit beneath them, creating heated flooring. You could even see the paths of the waters flowing from the hot springs, going through canals created by the Roman founders all those years ago, eventually filling up the large, green, murky pool in the center of the site (also, you can actually drink the water from the hot springs at Bath if you want to. And in case you are wondering, I did in fact drink the Bath water. Not as bad as you would think. Warm and a bit metallic, but definitely drinkable).
The city of Bath as a whole was very interesting, reminding me a bit of other more touristy towns, such as Eureka Springs. The town builds itself around the idea of it being this ancient site, and that is where a lot of the overt appeal comes from, and many of the shops try to particularly attract tourists, such as the fudge shop handing out free samples in the main square with a sign spinner, or the gift shop nearby with swords on display in the window (though regrettably none for sale), or the bookstore occupying an old meeting house with romanesque architecture. There was even a small little glass shop that me and some friends stopped in to look around that reminded me of Terrace Studio back home. Overall, Bath felt both very foreign and familiar in the best of ways, serving as a perfect little tourist trap that I wish I could spend more time in than I did.
(Also, we had afternoon tea in the Pump Room at Bath. Quite possibly one of the greatest and fanciest moments of my life.)
Theatre in London U of A 