Bath - The Roman Baths

7-Nov-2010, why were we going to Bath in the first place? Well as the name suggest, to visit the baths! The Roman Baths that is. Bath was a kind of Roman resort in the old days. People come here to relax, enjoy the view, and have a good scrub down.

We made our way into the famous Roman bath, and well, I can't really say that I was all that thrilled. When I read in the website that admission to the Roman bath was included in the land tour, I thought that we were allowed to well, take a bath in the Roman bath! You know, in Turkey you get to do a Turkish Bath, in Japan you have the onsen. But apparently, erm, bathing was not allowed in the Roman bath. We weren't even allowed to touch the hot water of the bath as it is apparently 'not treated' and thus might be harmful to us. Bummer. Was it beautiful? Well, there was just one main bath you see when you enter the main entrance. But I guess what made the experience stood out, was that it was Sunday, and the church bells were ringing non-stop, and the charm of the old Roman Bath along with the bells, kinda time-traveled you back to another time and dimension. As you decent to the lower level, you'll find that besides the main bath, there are smaller bath all around through different tunnels. Here are some cool photos of the tunnel and the baths on the lower level.

Most interesting of all to me, the Roman Bath was a place of worship and a temple to the goddess Sulis Minerva. Minerva was my favorite Roman Goddess, also synonymous with the Greek goddess Athena. Minerva was the goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic, and the inventor of music, and I believe she was also the goddess of war. She was my kind of gal :P If you have me on your MSN list, you may have come across her name before without even realizing it!

And in her honor, a temple was build, and in it were these wordings:

"... in her temple the eternal flame never whiten into ash..."

Ref:
The Roman Baths
Turkish Bath
Onsen
Sulis Minerva