Today was awesome! We went on a little adventure to Stratford Upon Avon to explore where William Shakespeare was born. We started our long day with a walk down to the Moor Street Station, where we caught a train to the Stratford Upon Avon Station. The train ride was about an hour, so it gave us time to relax before our big day of walking.
When we got there, we walked through the town to me our tour guide Tim at the Gower Memorial Statue. We stopped at a coffee shop called Caffe Nero, where I got a hot cocoa. Unfortunately, I did not check the weather this morning when I was deciding what to wear, so I was unprepared for the cold weather that I was met with when I stepped outside. The hot cocoa helped to warm me up as we started our tour at the Bancroft Gardens. There was a really old bridge that we went on, and it was really cool to see all of the swans that were in the canal. From there, we went to the Royal Shakespeare Theater, where we talked about it was burnt down and then rebuilt.
We also went to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was baptized and buried. We got to see his grave, and the church that he went to when he lived in Birmingham. I really enjoyed this part of the tour because it was so interesting to see the inside of the church and where he was buried. We also visited where Shakespeare was educated. We ended our tour at a statue of Shakespeare, where we disbanded and went to get lunch.
Lunch was at Dirty Duck, a very popular pub in Stratford. I tried the aged cheddar mac and cheese, which was really good. After that, we had free time to shop around, so we stopped in the Royal Shakespeare Theater store, were we did a little shopping before moving on into the town. We stopped in Pound Land (the dollar store) to get some chocolate before heading to the different charity shops in the town. I ended up buying a cute purse at one of the stores, and then we went to meet back up with everybody outside of Shakespeares Birth Place for a tour.
The tour of Shakespeare’s Birth Place was really interesting, and I enjoyed learning about how they lived back in the 1500s. We got to see what Shakespeare’s father did for a living, and what house he actually lived in. It was also cool to learn about how they give birth to a baby and where they did it back then. We got to see a reenactment of some of the most famous Shakespeare plays, and shop through the Shakespeare store one last time before we caught the train back home. I cannot wait until Saturday when we go to Oxford!
