Aquae Sulis

The last time I saw England I was seven years old. It was 1957. We were saying goodbye to the maternal grandparents and the cousins, bound for the U.S. on a ship out of Southampton. It's been awhile. Time and life and money and fear of flying got in the way. And yet here I finally was, boarding an airplane in Dallas with Glenn, who had pretty much set the whole thing in motion.
After a fairly sleepless overnight flight we touched down at Heathrow at 1:00 in the afternoon, found some nectar of the gods, coffee, at a Costa, exchanged some dollars for pounds, and got on a bus to Bath.

We were booked at a little three story B & B called The Henry House, which was quaint and old, but still had all the updated modern conveniences, including wifi and good mattresses. After that we roamed the charming, sunny streets going off at all angles, basking in the Jane Austin era regency buildings and the rolling hills.

Blending in

The famous Royal Crescent

Since England is the home of gin and since we like a nice dry martini on occasion we discovered the first, and best, of the gin bars we frequented in our travels, The Canary Gin Bar. Far from William Hogarth's bleak 18th century cartoon of Gin Alley, this was a small, cozy, and cheery place where one could sample the local product.

The Roman name for Bath was Aquae Sulis, named after the local hot springs the Celts enjoyed, while linking the Celtic goddess, Sulis, to their goddess, Minerva, in a smooth move to adapt to the area they were invading. The Romans, lovers of great plumbing and hot baths, built a spa and temple over the hot springs and had some good soaks when the weather got cold. Signs of Roman culture and architecture were everywhere, and we also ran into numerous Italians working in the city, probably because it felt a bit like home.

The Roman spa

Sulis Minerva. See Romanbaths.uk.co

If you had to be a Roman soldier sent to the far corners of the known world, this city doesn't seem like a bad place to settle down 

Of course, nothing lasts forever, and centuries later, the Christians, as they tended to do, built a large Abbey right in nearly the same spot, to replace the old religion with the new.

Next blog, some photos of the beautiful Bath Abbey.