Bath

After a few busy weeks I am now in a position to continue posting pictures of my adventures with Katherine Parr. In my last entry I posted pictures of some of the places I visited without Katherine. In this entry we'll see how I met Katherine and she and I survived the spa town of Bath together.

I was in Bath, walking along Great Pulteney Street, not too far from where Jane Austen once lived, when I came across a petite personage in Renaissance apparel walking down the street and repeatedly crying out the refrain "I Survived" to passers by (see photo above).

She soon came up to me to announce her survival and, after I had overcome my astonishment at encountering the last surviving wife of Henry VIII, she and I soon hit upon the ingenious idea of starting this blog for the purposes of documenting her incredible talent for survival in various spots around Great Britain. Not one to let the grass grow under her feet, she proposed that we start instanter by documenting our time in Bath. So we started our walk along the streets of Bath, which are lined with lovely buildings constructed of the characteristic golden colored Bath stone:


I soon found a place with my name on it:



And we then walked on to see the sights of the city. First, Bath Abbey, where we admired the fan vaulting and late perpendicular lines of the interior:





And pitied a Renaissance lady who didn't survive:



Then we visited the Roman Baths, where people for centuries came to bath in the curative mineral waters, making Bath a happening tourist destination:


Near the Pump Room, a location mentioned in Austen's novels as the central gathering place for late 18th century society, we found that things hadn't changed much at all:



Apparently a group of Austen aficionados were donning period attire and recreating the Bath of Jane's time. We followed them up to the Great Crescent, the poshest area of Bath high on a hill, where some cyclists posed for a picture:





Another shot of me, showing the curve of the buildings at the top of the crescent:



In the afternoon we stopped at the lovely Pulteney bridge, which was designed with Florence's Ponte Vecchio in mind to have shops lining the sides of the bridge:



We stopped at a little tea shop on the bridge for a lovely cream tea and an even lovelier view along the river:








After a wonderful visit in Bath Katherine returned with me to the charming 18th century hotel where I was staying with my folks:



Where we climbed the narrow winding stairs...



...up to the view from my little attic room...



and a beautiful sunset:



NEXT TIME: Katherine goes to Wales!

Katherine Parr History Fun Fact: Katherine herself was married four times, only two times less than her most famous husband, Henry VIII.