Roman Baths with Bath Abbey reflection in Bath, England.
Credit: iStock Photo
Life as we live out each day is a pot of surprises, sometimes mysterious in its own ways.
Our plan was a day trip to the Roman Baths in the city of Bath, a 30-minute drive from Bristol in the United Kingdom, when we visited our older daughter. A comfortable stay at her apartment; nevertheless, a solo bathroom posed challenges. Among other things, the bath time was compromised!
In January, the eternal query ‘to wait or not to wait!’ for the cold wet weather to change into a bright, shining sunny day waylaid our plans. The loss in our bath times stood compensated in our drench times.
We snaked through the crowded streets to make it to the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built by the Romans sometime in 60 CE, they leveraged the naturally occurring hot springs believed to have curative effects even to this day. It is now a famous spa city in the valley of the River Avon.
The Romans built a temple and a shrine for offerings. ‘Curse tablets’ caught our attention, which were messages scratched on metal written to the goddess as a personal vendetta against enemies. It housed the most advanced bathing areas using yesteryear technology. Indeed, an exhilarating experience.
We stepped onto the streets that transformed into an immersive experience. As the drizzle accelerated into a rain, our desperate search for hot vegetarian food accelerated too. We entered the Mexican restaurant drenched, but the spicy food warmed the body and dried our clothes.
The thrill to savour enticing gelato took over our logic while it poured with further fall in temperatures. The challenge now was to walk back to the vehicle in the parking lot, approximately 10 minutes away. The thought itself was gut-wrenching on a freezing day!
As we walked down the pavement, we shuddered as the chill cut through to the bones. Around a blind curve, a speeding car splashed muddy, icy, cool water from a vast puddle on all of
us. Drenched from head to toe, it appeared that our woes would never end. But it did.
‘Home sweet home’ welcomed us as we lined up once again for a hot shower to complete our day of baths! Was it a curse tablet targeted and written then that caught us today, centuries later?
The day ridden in water is now brilliantly etched in our memories—Roman Baths.