Dinner with Shakespeare!?

It is now time for me to descried my trip to Shakespeare land. We started at the horrific hour of 7am! You can imagine the amount of crabby college students there was on the coach (charter bus). Our bus driver felt the need to give us commentary on EVERYTHING including dogs and camera's on the street. Everyone was a little annoyed seeing as we all wanted to sleep. Our first stop was Coventry Cathedral. The original cathedral was built in the 11th century. During World War II it was bombed and greatly damaged. Instead of rebuilding they added a new cathedral next door and left the ruins as a remembrance of the war. Their new mission is to promote reconciliation and forgiveness. Here are a few pictures of this beautiful cathedral. The first few will be from the new cathedral.

These are charred beams from the rubble that fell in the shape of a cross after the bombing.

The art at the end of the cathedral is a HUGE tapestry, it was amazing.

This is where you can see the old cathedral on the left connects to the new on the right.

We spent about an hour here and then headed off to Kenilworth Castle. This was probably my favorite site we have seen yet. Seriously, it was amazing! This castle was built in 1012, I think. Around there anyway. It is a ruin now which means you can climb, explore, and dream of being Drew Barrymore in Ever After. We were all pretending to be princesses as we climbed on the ruins. I don't know if you can see my excitement in the pictures but you should be able to understand better that when I tell you that I was singing all the princess songs I know at the top of my lungs. 

 This is me looking out the window of my tower waiting for my prince to come. 

I didn't want to leave! I really think I could have spent the whole day exploring. This trip made me decide that I want to go on a European Costume tour. What exactly is that might you ask? Well, it is a trip around Europe complete with time period costumes for the appropriate sights. Doesn't that sound so fun?!

We met up at the but yet again and started on our way towards our first Shakespeare sight which was Anne Hathaway's cottage. Not Anne Hathaway from The Devil Wears Prada but the Shakespeare's cougar wife Anne Hathaway.  The main draw to her cottage was a lot of beautiful gardens and woods. This willow hut is where it was recommended to weep over unrequited love. 

This is actual a horrible picture and you can't tell what it is but oh well. Here is the cottage itself.

And this is me being...amazed in the maze. BHAHAHAHA I am punny.  

This maze was awesome, the best part was playing tag. For some reason it was twice as scary having someone chase you in a maze than normal. 

Next stop was Mary Arden's farm. Mary Arden was Shakespeare's mother. This farm is an actual working farm. We got to see a falconry presentation which was really cool. And then we talked with the animals and did a rendition of the weird sisters in the woods. 

 I was trying to be a sheep but...it didn't translate well....




 

After this picture I proceeded to fall over the bench because it wasn't screwed to the legs.

This is Mary Arden's actual house. The coolest part about this place is there were hardly any people around so you could  kinda do what you wanted. It was fun. 

Now we headed off to our Bed and Breakfast. I don't know if I am strange or something but the idea of staying at a bed and breakfast sounds so special to me. The room was tiny but adorable, as you can see..

Once we checked in and ordered our proper English breakfast we went to get some food at the Garrick Inn one of the oldest buildings in Stratford. I got beef and ale pie! It was delicious, I am a big fan of ale in my pies. 

After our dinner we made a stop at the candy store for our daily allotments of chocolate.  London has made chocolate a problem for all of us. Anyway, once we had our chocolate bars in hand we were ready to see a little Merchant of Venice. 

This show was...interesting...very very interesting.  It was set in Las Vegas, which added something different but didn't translate well into Act II which was unfortunate. Actually the whole show didn't translate well. It feel very flat for me. The end just left me very very confused. I would say it was the worst Shakespeare we have see which is very unfortunate. I left ready to go to bed! I seriously fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. It was a long day filled with lots of exploring. It has been a long time since I have slept that well.

I was going to knock the whole stratford-upon-avon trip out in one post but I am tired so you will have to wait for tomorrow (or sunday, I will be writing a paper tomorrow) to hear about our run in with some swans, naps in the garden, and one of the top 2 Shakespeare shows I have ever seen. Until then my friends!