A trip to Bath

This past Saturday half of the 2011 Marshall Scholars came together for a visit to Bath, an old city about 100 miles west of London. I hadn't seen any of the non-Cambridge Marshalls for over a month before this trip, so I was really looking forward to reuniting with everyone and catching up. Bath is one of the most historical cities in all of the United Kingdom, founded by Romans as a spa. The first site I saw when I arrived at Bath, on my way to meet up with the Marshall group, was the Bath Abbey - beautiful architecture reminiscent of the King's College chapel (both made from Bath stone and during a similar time period).

Bath Abbey

The 17 of us took part in a great free tour of the city of Bath, where we went to the circus area of homes built in a beautiful circle the exact diameter of Stonehenge. We traveled through Bath to many different sites, but then we were all a little bit tired and decided to relax in a park and catch up. The Marshalls are such a great group, and its very easy to feel like you have known each other for such a long time, thanks in part to our shared experiences and the intensive week of orientation we had together.

Bath Circus

Downtown Bath

Bath Abbey

The day ended with a bit of tea followed by a game of mini-golf for half of us, which had to leave that evening, while the other half went off to a spa treatment at the baths.

Mini golfing!

I arrived back to Cambridge late Saturday night, and had to wake up very early the next morning, because New Zealand was playing France in the Rugby world cup. My new friend Jake is from New Zealand, so he cooked everyone breakfast that woke up at 8am on Sunday to watch the game with him, which was great fun. Not sure I completely understand rugby, or that it would ever replace college football for me, but it was definitely fun to watch New Zealand narrowly defeat the French.