A weekend away in Bath

I've been wanting to visit Bath for many years, and last weekend we were able to make it happen! My husband and I managed a night away, with my Mum staying overnight to watch the teenagers. 

We chose to travel by train because Bath is very walkable and our hotel was close to the station. My son loves trains and was jealous of our journey so I took a photo of each train that we travelled on for him! We only needed to change once and it was a smooth journey, it took us about three hours and I spent most of the journey just looking out of the window. I love train journeys too!

 

Bath is such a lovely city, all the architecture is so beautiful. I loved how even on the main shopping streets all the shops were in keeping with the setting, there weren't any garish shop signs and they were all tucked away behind decorative pillars. It felt as though a lot of effort has gone into making it an attractive place to visit and spend time.

The one thing that I definitely wanted to visit in Bath was The Roman Baths. I've heard of them of course, but I had no idea that the baths were actually fed by a hot spring! There was also a lot more to see than just the main bath area which was familiar to me from photographs. The whole museum was fascinating. I was particularly taken with the Bath curse tablets which are small sheets of metal inscribed with curses against a specific person, usually for something like a theft, and thrown into the spring for the attention of the goddess Sulis so that she could identify the culprit and punish accordingly.

There is an enormous bath complex to explore and it's brought to life really well with projections and large screens. The audioguide was also very good with lots of really interesting information.

We stayed in a very nice spa hotel, which came with some extra benefits because we booked using our credit card. We had use of the spa all day, which was lovely, and we also received a generous credit towards a treatment. I had an upper body massage and facial treatment which was amazing, the massage was very firm and left tears in my eyes but I felt so good afterwards and my skin was really soft. The spa area had warm and hot pools with a sauna and steam room, and the waters in the hotel spa are supplied by one of the hot springs.

Our rate included a cooked breakfast and so in addition to the continental breakfast offerings I opted for pancakes with thick cream and strawberries. Delicious!

We had a lovely weekend away, it was so nice not to have to worry too much about the children (my Mum didn't stay for the whole weekend and I'm not sure they really saw her even when she was there!) My husband is already eyeing up the next weekend away!