Our day trip to Bath - a German perspective
Posted on: 20 Nov 2018Max and Nina were sent to Bath for a day to visit the best places and to review them from a German perspective.
We took the train from Temple Meads, the oldest and largest railway station in Bristol. A ticket from Bristol to Bath and return costs £7.90 and the ride is only 15 minutes.
The first thing we noticed when arriving in Bath, were the old beautiful buildings with the different shops, making it perfect for strolling around and shopping. Apart from that you have a whole range of sightseeing possibilities, like the Roman Baths, the Fashion Museum, the Victoria Art Gallery and the Abbey Church.
If you want to see as much as possible but save money, we recommend you buying the Saver Ticket, which includes entry to Roman Baths, Fashion Museum & Victoria Art Gallery for only £22.50, or less if you are a student, senior or child.
Our journey started at the Roman Baths, which are the only hot springs in the UK. They are a major tourist attraction and receive more than one million visitors a year. To support your walk through there with further information, you can get an audio guide at the entrance. The audio guide works in different languages, which made it very useful for us.
Furthermore, the different rooms had digital projections of Roman people to make it easier for you to imagine how the baths were used at that time. There were even two people disguised as Romans, to make it more interesting for children. It was like a journey into the past.
At the end you have the opportunity to try the water from the hot springs. A little advice from us: Don’t do it, it tastes like warm old water.
The Roman Baths is open 9:30 – 17:00 and a single ticket will charge you £16.50 for an adult.
Our next stop was the Victorian Art Gallery, a must visit for every art enthusiast. The museum is divided into two exhibitions. The main exhibition, which is permanent and guides us from the past to the present art and the current exhibition that celebrates the work of Clifford and Rosemary Ellis, whose artistic partnership spanned five decades.
It was very interesting to see how art changed over the last hundreds of years. Unfortunately, we were in a little hurry so we didn’t have the time to examine the china, since we had an appointment at the Bath Abbey.
The Victoria Art Gallery costs £4.50 or less and is open everyday from 10.30 - 17.00.
One of our favourites was the Tower Tours at the Bath Abbey. It is the perfect spot to take amazing photos from Bath. At the top of the church you have a fantastic view over the roofs of the city.
You have to climb up more than 250 small steps at a spiral staircase so we won’t recommend the tour for people with bad physical health and children under 10 years.
What made Tower Tour very entertaining was the guide, a lad who not only explained interesting things about the Abbey but was also very funny.
The tickets for a tour are £8 for an adult and £4 for a child (5-15 years), they can be purchased from the Abbey shop on the day only. Group bookings need to be booked in advance.
After this exhausting climbing tour we needed lunch, so we went to the “Bar + Block Steakhouse”, which is located right in the heart of Bath, just a few minutes to walk from the shopping and museum area.
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The menu is clear structured and focused on the main concept of a steakhouse, offering different cuts of steak and various side dishes. For those of you who are not steak experts, the menu shows you a drawing of a cow and exactly which cut comes from which part of the cow. For lunch and for the small hunger, “Bar & Block Steakhouse” also has an express menu, with dishes that are cooked fresh and served in 10 minutes for under £10 including a drink.
We were so amazed by the food, that we decided to write a separate review on this restaurant, you can read it here.
For a perfect ending for this long day we visited the Thermae Bath Spa to finally relax a little bit. It is located in the centre of Bath and has a wonderful rooftop pool, where you can bathe in Britain’s only naturally warm, mineral-rich waters just as the Celts and Romans did over 2000 years ago.
Thermae combines the best of the historic spa with contemporary design and facilities including a selection of relaxing spa treatments. In addition to the rooftop pool, were you can watch the sunset and have a spectacular view over Bath, you have the Minerva Bath at the basement. With flowing curves and grand columns, the thermal waters are complemented by an invigorating massage jet, whirlpool and lazy river.
On the 2nd floor there is the Wellness Suite, with two different steam rooms, an infrared room, an ice chamber, a Celestial Relaxation Room and the so called Experience Showers.
From a German perspective we recognised that the British way of wellness, especially sauna, is very different to ours. First, you seem to focus on steam rooms and infrared rooms, where as in Germany you mostly have the classic Finnish saunas with 90°C or more and sauna infusion. And second, everyone wears their swimwear and even their slippers in the sauna, which felt pretty weird to us, since in Germany everyone is naked.
We always thought that the point of sauna is to sweat, but there was no sauna hot enough to even get close to sweating, maybe that’s why you can leave your clothes on. There seem to be a lot of cultural differences, but it was interesting for us to see the British way of wellness.
To sum up, the Thermae Spa is a great place to relax and to recharge. It is definitely one of the highlights in Bath and worth a visit.
We recommend you the “Thermae Welcome” which is a 2 hour spa session and use of towel, robe & slippers for a price of £36, an additional hour costs £10.
Deeply relaxed we took the train back to Bristol after spending the whole day in Bath. We recommend a day trip to Bath to everyone.
Article by:
Nina is an exchange student from Germany on an international internship with 365Bristol as part of the Erasmus programme for transferrable skills across Europe. She will be working at 365 throughout November 2018 to improve her language skills. In Germany, she studies business administration with a focus on marketing.
