Stonehenge and Bath

One of our scheduled destinations was to visit the Roman Bath at Bath, England. My daughter had to do a report for school last year on the Romans; some aspect of their culture, art, influence, etc. Since we knew we were going to Bath, anyway, we encouraged her to study that place. She had to do a written report and a visual aid - a model of the bath. So it was much more interesting for us to visit than it would have been without the studying.

Of course, we had to visit Stonehenge on the way, as it was pretty close. I had studied this monument in my art history classes long ago, so I had some prior knowledge, but who doesn't?

You can tell it was cold here, again. Luckily for us, the day cleared up a bit while we were in Bath.



Many things surprised me about Stonehenge up close. First, it's a much smaller site overall than I expected. Of course, the stones are huge. But they are closer together than I expected. It's hard to capture that in a photograph, and I'm sure my art history classes informed me of the overall measurement of the site, but who remembers that, and who makes sense of it when all you hear are numbers?



See? It looks huge like this, doesn't it? And isn't this how you usually see it? I mean, look at those tiny little people in the picture. But what I mean by it not being so huge is that it only takes a few minutes to circumnavigate.

And I was surprised by the commercial-ness of this site.



And there was a gift shop, which wasn't totally unsuspected. I was happy enough for the snack bar to be there after getting frozen. It just made me chuckle. Stonehenge aint no amusement park, y'know!

Well, we spent some quality time with Stonehenge and then made our way towards Bath.

Here is a small park in the town.

Lots of wonderful architecture; this is the church on the square.


The man in the orange jacket is the DH.


This is not the bath, but is nearby.

And here we are, finally, at the bath.  The water has no odor, but it isn't healthy to bathe in anymore, so they won't let you get in.  I had no desire, really.

After touring the terrace, we went down to the ground level.  And you can just see that the sun did come out a bit while we were there.
I only saw this guy the one time.  No idea what that was all about.  He didn't do anything special except dress funny.  Oh well.

I think I'd better split this post in two as I have so many more pictures I want to show you and I don't trust blogger enough to not crash.  So, more Bath tomorrow!