Today we had a tourist day and took the train to Stratford-Upon-Avon which was only about an hour away. We started our morning early and left the hotel around 8:30 am and got a train back to Birmingham at 8:30pm. The weather wasn’t particularly on our side this morning, it was cool outside and it was raining pretty hard. However, we were fortunate and the rain stopped around 3:30 and the sun came out. Most of us took our free time and went to the thrift stores that we passed. All three that I remember going to were charity stores, which means that either all or most of the profit they make from selling clothes goes to charity or a cause. The ones I remember going to were for poverty, cancer, autism and mental health. This really surprised and interested me because I know of some charity stores in eth US but they are mainly connected to hospitals and not causes or charities.
Before our walking tour of Stratford we got some lunch at a restaurant called Boston Tea Party. We decided to be risky and ordered iced coffee that was made with avocado. At the time we were all really suspicious of it but it ended up being a risk with a high reward, personally it’s been the best coffee I’ve had since coming to the UK. We met back at the Gower memorial to start our walking tour. We walked around the whole town and hit all the major sites and learned of the rich history of the town but also of the one and only William Shakespeare. Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable about Stratford and Shakespeare, he himself was an actor who had been in a few Shakespeare plays at the Royal Shakespeare CompanyTheatre. The theater was really large and very architecturally beautiful. According to our tour guide the building had been renovated after a £100 million donation. Certain parts of the theater remained from the past such as the back part which was designed by a female architect Elizabeth Scott in 1932. I found this extremely interesting since at the time women were constricted to certain jobs and certain norms and I didn’t believe that being an architect was a part of that.
Another cool fact we find out was that David Garrick who was Shakespeare’s biggest actor was the creator of many common practices in modern theater. He created props, he created and used objects for the plays that belonged to the theater so he began to stamp “Theater Property” on them and began using the term props. Furthermore he created “limelight”, he would get tons of limes and light candles on them so that the light would reflect up and on to the actors on stage. Some other interesting things we saw while on our tour were Shakespeare’s home and birthplace, and the church where he is buried (Holy Trinity Church). We got to see many swans on the river since they are the emblem of Stratford. Additionally we got to see the house where John Harvard grew up, and yes that Harvard. I think one of my favorite things to see was the Holy Trinity Church because it was so beautiful, and the stained glass was very pretty.
A cool fact we learned was that Lady Macbeth was used by the World Health Organization as the trademark for hand washing. In Macbeth the play Lady Macbeth is never able to wash the blood off her hands after she encourages her husband to kill the king and she gives a speech that lasts 20 seconds which is the recommended time for hand washing. One thing that really surprised me was that the public library in Stratford has a wooden plaque that says “A gift from Andrew Carnegie”, I was surprised to see a Pittsburgh connection all the way in Stratford.
Although our main focus today was about culture I did see some things that pertained to healthcare in the UK. As we were walking we saw a menopause and well-being center, this was the first time I had ever encountered a menopause center, in fact I didn’t even know they existed. Overall I really enjoyed our trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. I haven’t read much of Shakespeare’s work but I did learn a lot about his personal and professional life and really got to see his impact on the world.
