Excursion: Day Trip to Bath

Travelogue: Somewhere between Bath and Oxford – Day 23

We — I, a colleague, ten ducklings, as I've taken to calling our students — are presently on the train back to Oxford after our day-long excursion to Bath. We made the trip to visit the 1,500-year-old Roman baths that give the town its name. The incredible site and museum didn't disappoint.

In addition to marveling at the impressive pools, which are still fed by the same spring that made them the hot spot (haha) they were in 100 A.D., and the ancient artifacts, I walked around chuckling to myself because heads feature centrally in the exhibit and narration about the temple that once stood on the site. Why is this funny? Well, as some of you know, the title of the academic paper that I snuck off to Manchester to present at the Narrative conference this last weekend was: "'To be the lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms': Heads in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest." Yep.

The Gorgon's head from the pediment of the TEmple to Minerva.