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Take The Seaside The Jane Austen Way In Bath, England

It is a truth universally acknowledged that British writer Jane Austen is a huge industry: Look at the runaway success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and its sequel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. But only real Austen fans will make the pilgrimage to Bath—a popular vacation destination in Jane's day that she actually didn't like very much—for the Jane Austen Festival, which runs till next Sunday the 27th.

Austen lived in Bath for six years and set significant parts of two of her novels in the seaside resort town, but privately admitted to not liking it all that much. Back then, visitors would take salubrious dips in the geothermal hot springs by day and go to the theatre by night; you can still do both of these, although you may be more likely to see Bath Rugby and check into an organic resort like the Thermae Bath Spa.

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Tags: England / Baths / Museums / → All Tags

More Than a Bath in Bath

When is a bath more than a bath? That's easy. When it's:

the best preserved Roman religious spa from the ancient world.

That's the marketing tag on the Roman Baths in the English town of Bath, and that really does make it sound enticing. Here you can wander through the Roman temple, Sacred Spring and Roman bath house areas and see exhibits of artifacts from the original days of the bath. What's even better is you can listen to an audioguide recorded by the great travel writer Bill Bryson, which surely takes a witty stance on all things naked and bath-related.

If you want a dip yourself, you'll have to go to the nearby Thermae Bath Spa, where the water isn't quite such a murky green color.

[Photo: scot2342]

Related Stories:
· English Soaked About Bath's Baths [Jaunted]

Tags: spas / England / → All Tags

English Soaked About Bath's Baths

Big news in Bath this week. This pretty town in the west of England--a favorite haunt of ahead-of-her-time Jane Austen--finally has a bath again. This week the Thermae Bath Spa complex opened to provide local Bathians and tourists alike with an alternative to a quick hop under the shower. With four natural thermal baths to choose from and way too many aromatherapy-massage-yoga combinations for us to get our head around, there's no excuse for poor hygiene on your England tour now.

Of course it all sounds just lovely (with proper English accent, please) to us tourists, but locals have been whinging about it for decades, ten million pounds over budget as it is, not to mention opening three years later than planned. Better late than never, we merrily say, and we recommend the Watsu treatment, just because we think its name has plenty of potential for bad puns--another English speciality.

[Image via atotheizzo/Flickr]

Related stories:
Bath Gets Its Spa [Times Online]
In Hungarian Hot Water [Jaunted]