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Stratford Trip Day Two

Our first visit of day two was at Shakespeare's birthplace. Do you see how cleverly we visit places in chronological order? This is probably my favorite house we visited and it's not hard to see why. It's adorable! All I ever said during this visit was "Awwww . . . . how cute!" The cutest thing was this little covering made of tree branches that you can sit in and hear Shakespeare sonnets quoted to you over a speaker.






What a house to grow up in eh?





There was even a Shakespeare impersonator strutting around. Wonderful :)

Some snapshots of the streets of Stratford.

A Christmas store? Yes.



Quoth Chandler: Can it BE ANYMORE pink?
This was the lovely backyard of New Place, a home Shakespeare inhabited.

This last house is called Hall's Croft. Doesn't it sound like some video game or band name? John Hall was Shakespeare's son-in-law. He was a renown doctor in his time and supposedly greatly influenced Shakespeare's characters that were doctors.


This was a fun backyard to see. I nearly fell asleep underneath one of the trees.

And then we come to the end of Shakespeare's life, here at Trinity Church where he lies.

He is literally buried right in front of the altar in the church which wasn't what I was expecting at all. That seems quite impressive to be buried right there in the church. It is, truly, the Mecca for all English majors. Now that I have visited the great bard himself, I suppose I can die at peace now :)
After visiting Shakespeare's grave, Casmin and I went and explored some of the other graves around. We discovered that we both have a fascination with graves.












After paying our respects to those resting in their graves, we decided to go on a little boat ride! That was so much fun! I love anything that has to do with boats or water. It seemed much cleaner than the Thames so we were happy with that.



Things got really exciting when we got caught in the grass on the bank. With that said, Liz here was our expert, experienced rower, and we felt very safe in her hands.

More so than in my hands, I assure you.
I can certainly kayak with one paddle quite well. But this whole two oar thing took some time to get used to!

But I eventually found the rhythm.

There's the theatre were we saw a couple of Shakespeare plays during our stay. Watching Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. Does it get much better than that? Plus! I saw Patrick Stewart perform in The Merchant of Venice! He of course was quite superb as you would expect. And I got at about an arm's length away from him at one point. Not going to lie, it was awesome.

Comments

  1. NatalieJune 7, 2011 at 7:31 PM

    I'm inspired. I think I'm going to hook up a speaker to my patio with Shakespeare's sonnets on a loop.

    ReplyDelete

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