Arthur's Blog: A Quick Trip to Bath, and Its Relics of Ancient Rome and Jane Austen, Were an Entertaining Supplement to Oxford

Some 200 years ago, the aristocracy of England came to the city of Bath to vacation and have fun.  The younger visitors flirted with each other at nightly balls and dances and became engaged, the older ones gambled at various card and board games and horse races, had sumptuous meals, and attended endless soirees; and all of them "took the waters" at the Roman-era baths in the center of town.

Those visitors were brought to the health-giving liquids of Bath in sedan chairs carrying a single person held aloft by two bearers.They arrived for their daily dousings as early as 6 a.m. and remained immersed up to their chins for two hours, then whiled away the time until around 11 a.m., when they immediately proceeded to have a six-course lunch.

Some 200 years later, my wife and I arrived in Bath for a short stay following our wholly-commendable weeklong studies at Oxford University.  Though Bath is no longer confined to the rich, it is still known as a pleasure capital of Britain, and you come here for mindless entertainment and not for enlightenment. Bath still has a famous racetrack, in addition to several theaters and even more museums.  It has 80 hotels and 200 bed-and-breakfasts, a giant and sumptuous abbey (of cathedral proportions) that must be visited, an enormous outlying shopping center in addition to countless chic downtown stores, several wealthy townhouse districts of the most impressive architectural beauty; and most important, it still has those famous Roman baths surrounded by more modern bath establishments in which modern visitors soak (in mineral waters and fiercely hot steam baths) for the purposes of health.

Actually, the 2,000-year-old Roman Baths are more important for their archeaological attributes than for actual bathing purposes.  When you descend staircases to examine the digs that were undertaken beneath and adjacent to the baths, you see remains of the actual time when Rome occupied Britain and Roman soldiers policed the land.  Not even in Rome have I ever seen such graphic and understandable evidence of the way in which life was actually experienced in those times.  The bas reliefs, the sculptures, the household implements and furnishings, are so compelling that you find yourself more focused on them than on the swimming-pool-like baths filled with their mineral-infused waters.

Fifty yards away from the Roman baths are the modern Thermae Baths using the same mineral waters, in which current-day visitors spend several hours of their stay, as we did.

I have a plane to catch (we fly home in a few hours) and will desist from further descriptions of the Jane Austen Centre (two of her novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, were set in Bath; www.janeausten.co.uk), of the Royal Crescent and the somewhat similar Circus (circular housing estates), the remarkable fashion museum (surely the best in the world), the Pump Room (where we enjoyed brewed tea and scones), the awesome Abbey, and much more.  That portion of the Frommer's guides devoted to Bath contains ample descriptions of affordable bed-and-breakfasts, and you have no excuse for failing to include Bath on your own next trip to the British Isles.