Bath

Bath, a small town in southwestern London, is the setting for some of Jane Austen's novels, (like Northanger Abbey for instance, which is part of the curriculum for one of my classes here).  The Romans built baths around the hot-springs, where the water was thought to have health benefits.  Bath eventually became a place to vacation (around the time of Jane Austen- she actually went to Bath a few times herself), for the supposed restoring water, as well as the social life.  

They've kept it looking pretty close to the same way as it did back in Jane Austen's time.   (There is even a Jane Austen Center now). You can't bathe in the baths anymore (and I don't think you'd want to anyway, they look pretty gross).  But you can taste the water (it's been treated) if you pay 50 pence.  And we did.  It's super-minerally and really hot.  Here are some pictures from the Roman Bath part of our trip to Bath:

Bath was beautiful. What I enjoyed most was just walking around, looking at the town, and trying to imagine what it must have been like during Jane Austen's life and her novels. I imagined Catherine walking down to the baths or going to balls in teh Assembly Room, hoping to run into Mr. Tilney. Some of the buildings were really neat architecturally, but besides that, the scenery around it was beautiful. Obviously, I really loved it and I have five million pictures to prove it: