One and a half days in Bath
How to make the most of a day and a half in Bath
This itinerary assumes you are arriving in Bath around mid-morning from somewhere else in Britain, so it picks up before lunch on the first day. (Tip: There's a 8:30am train from London Paddington train station which arrives in Bath at 9:59am.)
You could easily swap most of those afternoon activities to become morning activities on Day 2 if your 36 hours have you leaving Barth after a morning on Day 2 to go elsewhere.
A relaxing first afternoon in Bath
Check into your Bath hotel—but just stay long enough to drop you bags and splash some water on your face so you can head right back out again to begin enjoying Bath.
Grab a Bath Bun for lunch at the ancient and storied Sally Lunn's and check out their little (free) kitchen museum.
Time: 60 min.
Visit the marvelously gothic Bath Abbey.
Time: 30 min.
Visit the Victoria Art Gallery.
Time: 30 min.
Bath's small public art museum has a nice collection including Gainsborough oil pantings
Take a short cruise on the Avon River.
Time: 25 min.
Time to hit the Bath Spa! Spend two hours soaking in the waters and taking treatments like an ancient Roman or Georgian grandee.
Time: 120 min.
Have dinner and call it a night.
Where to eat in Bath, from restaurants to pubs, Indian take-out to afternoon tea
A second full day in Bath
Start off your second day in Bath by sleeping in a bit, then heading to the Abbey Church Yard in front the of The Pump Rooms by 10:30am for an amazing free walking tour of Bath, during which you'll see lots of architectural highlights, including The Royal Crescent, The Circus, and Pulteney Bridge.
Time: 120 min.
Have a proper afternoon tea (in lieu of lunch) in the elegant Pump Rooms.
Time: 60 min.
Now pop out into the main part of this complex to visit the top sight in all of Bath, the ancient Roman Baths.
Time: 100 min.
For a sense of how Bath looked in its heyday, visit the Bath Fashion Museum installed in the elegant Georgian Assembly Rooms.
Time: 45 min.
At No.1 on the corner of the Royal Crescent is a townhouse restored into a Museum of Georgian Life, giving a glimpse into what things were like when Beau Nash was in charge.
Time: 45 min.
Time to find some dinner.
Where to eat in Bath, from restaurants to pubs, Indian take-out to afternoon tea
Since this itinerary takes into account travel time (walking, taking the Tube, driving, whatever):
- The times in grey circles are the times by which you need to start moving in order to go to the next stop.
- The times in blue circles are the times by which you should arrive at that stop to begin the fun.
- Viator.com - Best one-stop shopping site for all sorts of activities, walking tours, bus tours, escorted day trips, and other excursions. It is actually a clearinghouse for many local tour companies and outfitters, and since it gets a bulk-rate deal on pricing (and takes only a token fee for itself), you can actually sometimes book an activity through Viator for less than it would cost to buy the same exact tour from the tour company itself. (I once booked a Dublin pub crawl via Viator and later discovered that I saved about $1.50; also, the tour turned out to be sold-out, and they were turning away the folks in front of me in line, but since I had a pre-booked voucher I got in.)Partner
- Contexttravel.com - This bespoke walking tour company doesn't even call its 200 tour leaders "guides." It calls them "docents"—perhaps because most guides are academics and specialists in their fields: history professors, archeologists, PhDs, art historians, artists, etc. Groups are miniscule (often six people maximum), and most docents can be booked for private guiding sessions as well. They aren't always the cheapest tours, but they are invariably the best. People rave about Context.Partner
- City-discovery.com - Chief rival to Viator (though with a less spiffy interface and often sub-par text descriptions), representing many of the same tours (at the same prices). However, it also seems to cover more destinations, especially secondary ones. When it comes down to it, City-Discovery and Viator have maybe 70% the same inventory, but then 30% will be completely different (some Viator has City-Discovery does not, other vice-versa) so it pays to check through the offerings from both.Partner