The Family Takes Bath

I know that some of you are thinking, "About time!" Especially if you've spent any amount of time in close proximity with us. But no, we're talking about the city Bath in the Southwest of England. The city was named after it's main attraction: A Roman bath house. The Roman bath is about 2000 years old and a lot of the original architecture and engineering is still intact today. You can see the greenish water bubbling behind us at about 95 degrees F (that would be about 32 degrees C for those of you who are trying to have a vicarious European experience).

After the Romans left Britain, these baths were covered over in mud and eventually people built over the ruins. Then one day in the late 1700's, some workmen digging a new sewer for the city shoveled into the bronze head of the goddess Minerva (above on the right). They found that instead of a body, this head was attached to whole lost Roman bath house and temple.The boys found that the Roman Baths were much more interesting than they thought. Here's some of the things we did. Tyler and I sampled the water. And despite being chock full of minerals, the other two boys refused to believe that "rotten egg" smelling water was highly sought after by most thinking, breathing people.

Margaret, hearing about the alleged healing powers of the waters, sent Nathan to steam his black eye in the rising vapors of the water. But all Nathan could talk about was the statues outside the bath house. You can see an example of them in the picture below. He was particularly surprised by one that depicted four Hare-people standing in a line. He just couldn't believe that the artist would allow their "wee bahookies" to shine in the sun.

And Old Isaac thought it was pretty cool that someone could make this type of statue out of galvanized steel wire (we think it was more than just one wire).

9 April 2009

1.Today I discovered that sometimes rocks can give a taste to water.

2.A long time ago men and women couldn't bathe together.

3. They used to brush their teeth with peepee a long time ago.

-Nathan

The Roman bath is about 2,000 years old. People would go to the Roman Bath to worship and relax because there was a temple there too. Sick people went to a certain part of the bath to get healed.

-Isaac

Today we went to the Roman Bath. Bath was named after the Roman Bath. There were audio guides so we could learn more. The Romans found the water springs and built the bath about 2,000 years ago. There were lots of old carvings and pictures in the rocks and sculptures. The workers found jewels in the drains because they had melted off of peoples jewelry. Some of the baths were extremely hot; others were cooling rooms.

-Tyler