Shakespeare's Birthplace + Tonight

Yesterday was an all day excursion into Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. It was a much larger town than I expected, it even had a Subway, Toni & Guy, and Lush. Sorta weird.

The birthplace

Kelsea as Shakespeare

Me as Shakespeare

The Town

First we ate lunch at a little cafe across from his birthplace and I got a "chicken and mayonnaise" croissant which basically means chicken salad. It was pretty good. Then we got Moo Moo's... again. And I got Chocolate Fudge Brownie... again.

"I came from America for Moo Moo's" .. No that's not from us but it might as well be.

Milkshake flavors

Then we travelled through the Shakespeare house/museum and got to see some cool stuff that I couldn't take pictures of. I thought the house was pretty cool and nice for that time.

At the end of the tour there was a performance of some Shakespeare work and of course the boys were completely split from the girls just like at middle school dances. This has become a regular occurrence here.. they obviously don't like us.

Instead of the Shakespeare people performing for us first, we had Kelsey and Jennifer act out a few lines from Shakespeare. It was a very riveting performance:

The dollar store

Next we walked to Trinity Church where Shakespeare is buried. It's a functioning church where they still hold service, weddings, and funerals and there was actually a funeral earlier that day. I wonder how much it costs to have a function there.

Where Shakespeare is buried

Shakespeare's grave

Boys are separated again.

Then we went to Shakespeare's daughter's house. She was married to a doctor so the house was really big, especially for that time. The difference in that house (high class) and Shakespeare's family house (working class) was huge. I could have lived in Shakespeare's family house.. until I saw the doctor's house and decided that was more my thing.

Then we walked to Shakespeare's wife's cottage. Her name was Anne Hathaway.. not to be confused with today's actress. It was a smaller house with huge gardens in the back and they still sell produce and plants there.

Finally we headed back to the town center to get some food before the play. We ate at an Italian restaurant that makes all of it's pasta from scratch and it was really good. I had gnocchi with spinach and butter sauce and of course I had to order a Bellini to remind me of home:

We saw the play Merchant of Venice starring Patrick Stewart, the actor from Star Trek/X-Men (both of which I've never seen) and it was located and adapted to Las Vegas. It was really really interesting and I thought it was really good and creative! Although I kept falling asleep in some parts the second half was awesome. Except the end.. which didn't make too much sense to me or anyone else in the group. I think I would watch it again if I had the chance, but it was really long - 3 hours. The actors put on horrible southern and New York accents but I'm sure they think our British accents are horrible too.

When we finally got home around 12 I went right to sleep. Such a long day!

Today we just had classes. I only had my Tudor-Stuart History class and we just talked about the things we've seen so far and had our presentations on our discussion topics this week.

Then we all went out as a group for dinner and drinks and it just keeps getting more fun with these people! I feel pretty close with the other Oxford-ers even though we've only been together a week. We have so much fun together and everyone gets along so well.

Special cheers :) Y'all know!

I wish I had more pictures from tonight because it was so fun, but if you want to stalk my Facebook there's plenty there from other people. I'll maybe post up a video tomorrow from tonight.

Cheers!