A Day in Bath

Yesterday, Carl, Noam (a new friend), and I took a day trip to Bath, England. By train, it took us about an hour and a half to get to Bath from Oxford. Fortunately, it turns out that Noam is quite good at navigating train routes, and the transfers we had to make ended up going smoothly.

We arrived in the late morning and made our way to the center of the city, where the famous Bath Christmas Market was taking place. The Christmas Market boasts 129 various stalls, selling homemade crafts and treats, and lots of lovely Christmas decorations.

After exploring the market for a bit, we made our way to Bath Abbey. Bath Abbey is an enormous church, which was first founded in the 7th century. We wandered around the Abbey, admiring the stain glass and high ceilings for several minutes before realizing the the majority of the floor and much of the walls were composed of grave stones from the 15th-17th centuries. Realizing that the place where you are walking is above and surrounded by the remains of hundreds of people has an immensely sobering effect, I thought. It's amazing to find myself in places that have so much history.

After Bath Abbey, once again via Noam's impressive navigational skills, we made our way to the next site without a map: the Royal Crescent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Crescent

The Royal Crescent is slightly outside the city center, and our walk back took us through a lovely little park.

After eating lunch, we walked around the town a bit more and toured two art museums. Per my request, we ended up at the Holburne Art Museum, where we stayed until dark (only 4:00pm-ish) to see a light exhibit. We sat in the cafe of the museum (from where one can see the lights outside) and waited for it to be dark. Neither Carl nor Noam were quite as excited about the lights as me, but I think they were glad that we stayed too. Also, I thought it was a nice break from quite a bit of walking. Here are some photos I took of the light exhibit:

Pretty cool, right??

Shortly after, we made our way back to the train station and headed home to Oxford.

Regardless of the intermittent rain, it was a really nice day of sight-seeing. Bath is a really picturesque town, with views of rolling hills and historic architecture. I'm really glad I got the chance to see it.

Here are a few more photos taken throughout the day:

Thanks for reading!