March 27 (Tuesday)
Wake up is at 7:30 and
we're at breakfast at 8. Breakfast is buffet of sausages and bacon
and oatmeal and eggs and fruit and toast and wow is it something
else. Our arteries scream for mercy!
We get on the bus at
8:45 and Sergio gets us going to Stratford on Avon. We drive a
combination of narrow country roads (paved) and the M4 –
essentially an interstate sort of roadway – to arrive in Stratford
at 10 am. Over the course of the trip Katie has us name all 37 of
Shakespeare's plays – PK restrains himself from answering every
hint – and then a few of us recite quotes and short bits of his
plays. Amazingly, most of the kids are engaged!
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| in line for the Shakespeare birthplace tour |
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| watching two dudes do a scene from Romeo & Juliet |
Once we arrive, we line
up at the site of Shakespeare's birth for a short orientation tour.
The tour effectively uses artifacts and video clips, in order to give
the kids a sense of what England was like at the time. Once we're
through with this we step outside and follow the path to the house.
Along the way we enjoy a short dramatization of a scene from Romeo &
Juliet. The house itself is, well, old. And we couldn't take pictures
inside of it.
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| lunching across from Anne Hathaway's cottage |
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| funny pictures after lunch |
From there we have 30
minutes of free time to shop and explore the town before we're back
on the bus for a short ride up to lunch and a tour of Anne Hathaway's
cottage. Lunch was a comfortable combination of chicken and mashed
potatoes with peas. It felt like we were at grandmas – complete
with a scowl and reprimand if you got in the way.
Anne Hathaway was
Shakespeare's wife and her family farmed, and were more well-to-do
than his were. The house itself is more than twice the size that it
was when Shakespeare was courting her, and the local tour guide was
well-versed in questions of the building and its furniture.
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| group pic at Anne Hathaway's cottage |
After lunch and the
cottage tour we bid farewell to our good friend and driver Sergio
(the Italian Scot from Edinburgh) and say hello to Mahi, the new
driver. We change coaches and head for Oxford. Katie has added a
short tour of Oxford for us, on her own! Together with Mahi they get
us to the centre of town, near the Bodleian Library. The time here
gives us a great sense of the town, and of the many stories that are
told with this place as inspiration. After Katie gives us a short,
brisk, walking tour, we have 30 minutes to explore on our own. Some
of us shop. Some of us look around.
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| the Bodleian at Oxford |
On the road again, we
head for London, getting to our hotel in Feltham by 6:30 pm and by 7
pm we're at the Waterloo station waiting for a train into the City of
London proper. Once in London we head to the waterfront to pick up
some food before Katie takes us on a walking tour of Covent Gardens,
Trafalgar Square, then past the clock tower (which houses Big Ben,
the biggest of the five bells in the tower – and it's cracked) of
the Buildings of Parliament. She also gives us 30 minutes to explore
the area, and then we're back on the train at Waterloo Station to
head for the hotel for night.
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| London! Waiting in Covent Gardens at night |
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| London at night: In front of the Houses of Parliament! |
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| View of the Eye from across the Thames (the Houses of Parliament are behind us) |
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| in all its glory! |
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