Wednesday 20 July 2011

July 18

This is the beginning of a journey through England and Scotland to study Shakespeare, Theatre History, and Contemporary Theatre.  Lots of travel on foot and lots of tickets to plays!  Karen and I arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, today.  This is where Shakespeare lived and died.

At 8:35pm, the pedometer said: 13,506 steps; 6.394 miles; 577.3 calories burned.

Three planes in a row is too many.  And the airport in Amsterdam is freakin' massive!  It took Karen and me twenty minutes to get to the next gate!  WTF!

No pictures from travel in Birmingham...not really worth it.  The local accents are cool, but the area is dingy and dirty.  The "marketplace" was like Goodwill w/ fish vendors.  Ewww.  And lots of smokers...even crabby old lady smokers.  Gross.  It's also practically impossible to find a bank.  How do you transfer your American money?  Well, you don't.  After waiting for three hours in a bus terminal, no one should be surprised to find that my first UK purchase was coffee from Starbucks.  :)

Then...an hour long bus ride to Stratford w/ a screaming child.  You can't convince a two-year-old to shut up and go to sleep when she's tired.  Clearly, the sensible thing to do is scream your head off.

Stratford is nice, and about a twenty minute walk from end to end, which we discovered today when we had no way to get from the Stratford Visitors' Center to our B&B but to walk.  All the way across town...with all of our luggage.  :)  We did have some issues finding Moss Cottage because Evesham Road starts, stops, and starts again...but with a different numbering system.  The kind people at the Salmon Tail saved us by calling Moss Cottage, and, after some yummy food (potato & leek soup and Coronation Chicken), Bill Bruce, the owner, actually came and picked us up at the pub!!!  He is a wonderful man!  And we had homemade cake with our tea, like he promised!






Our room is lovely, cozy, and British.  Technology is becoming an issue, however.  Karen's laptop died, the Ipad wouldn't send my emails, and her Iphone picked up roaming networks here - not good.  And I have no phone at all so we are navigating this trip using maps...like, real ones...on paper.








A lovely view of Moss Cottage from the road.


Ohhh, scary British storm clouds!  It did rain overnight on the first night.


The house across the street...I just thought it was cute!


A look down Evesham Road...





2 comments:

  1. Laptop is up and blogging now... IPad is posting comments on the blog, but Uberconcerned about iPhone cost in UK... So it's on airplane mode or off unless emergency calls need to be made.

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  2. Tiffany, I am enjoying your daily adventures! Tell Karen, "Hi!" Vickie T

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