Best in Bath

 “Bath is very possibly my favorite city in the UK. I had the enormous pleasure of visiting it in September of 2005, during the Jane Austen festival, and while the fruits of the Bath in Bloom competition were still in view. I was blessed with three sunny days in which the sandstone of the city shone like gold, and the colorful flowers everywhere looked like jewels in that crown. The city of Bath was a dream for several of the things that I love most about England: for the writer Jane Austen, who lived there for a period of her life and who is honored at her own visitor’s center year round, as well as the weeklong festival every year in which the participants parade the streets in Regency costume; for archaeology, where the ancient Roman baths are better displayed and illustrated than any of the ones I have ever seen in Rome or really any part of Italy; for the beautiful Georgian and Neoclassical architecture everywhere, for the classic English interior design in many of the places to visit and even the modest bed and breakfast I stayed in; for Western fashion, where the Museum of Costume spans the most gorgeous clothes the past three centuries, for Bath’s quaint and unique shops (one shop with nothing but dollhouse miniatures comes to mind) English gardens and flowers, tea houses, English crafts and pottery, the English gothic architecture of Bath Abbey, some very friendly people, and the list goes on.
Of the English language schools in Bath, I chose to feature Best in Bath on this website for the fact that it is an independent school with small class sizes, and the owner Mark Appleton was the director of another long standing school in Bath before he founded this one, and he has been an ESL teacher for over 30 years. Students here will appreciate the Best in Bath’s beautiful school building and central location. For a city of its touristic importance, Bath has relatively few language schools, so students will have a good selection of high quality host families, and there is also a high quality university residence available in the summer. For getting around and seeing things outside of class, Bath as a city is very walkable, and beyond it, there are many other places to visit in what in my opinion is the most beautiful part of England: the beautiful Wiltshire countryside in general, the city of Bristol, which is much larger and just a few minutes away by train, Salisbury and Stonehenge, Chawton and Winchester for Jane Austen lovers (Jane penned Pride and Prejudice at a little table still in view at Chawton Cottage, where she lived for a period, and spent her last days in Winchester, where she is buried in the cathedral), Portsmouth and especially the historic shipyard there, the ruins of the Roman villa at Fishbourne (illustrated as well as are the Roman baths in Bath), and of course, London. I saw all of these places on the way to Bath and of all my travels in the UK, that trip was by far the most memorable.”