Stratford Part 2

So where did I leave off? Ah, yes, with the glove-room in Shakespeare's birthplace. Picking up...

A nice lady in the glove room explained the process of glove-making to us a bit, including the revolting combination of materials used to treat the leather; I won't even go into detail, it's too vile. As she said though, it's impressive that in those days they could actually find a formula that worked. From there, we took the stairs up to the second floor, where a display about the history of the birthplace awaited us. Just after us, a FLOOD of Asian tourists came in behind us; the same group from the restaurant! We let them go ahead of us into the birth room, which turned out to be a wise decision. Finally, our steps making the floorboards creak ominously, we crossed into the room that had belonged to Shakespeare's parents: the BIRTH ROOM!

It was a smallish room, dominated by a four-poster bed with curtains in the center. Surrounding it were a dresser, a couple of chairs, and a baby's cradle. I just can't believe we were there. Shakespeare was born there!

We talked to the friendly man who was supervising the room, who was curious to know what part of America we were from and how long we'd be in the country. He also wanted to know if we knew where the tune from "The Star Spangled Banner" had come from. Apparently it comes from an English drinking song called "To Anacreon in Heaven." 

Good lord, I looked it up on Wikipedia. It's true! But apparently it's called 'Anacreontic Song." Thanks goodness for such reliable sources. My goodness, our country's anthem is based on an English drinking song. HA. Irony.

Oh, by the way, the guy we were talking to had perhaps the biggest head I have ever seen. Not misshapen or anything; you probably wouldn't notice if you didn't look closely. But as I was standing right next to his chair, I got the full view of it. My God. I couldn't tell where head stopped and universe began.

Well, we got our fill of the room and worked our way back outside through the rest of the house, stopping to sign the guest book on our way out. Then it was on to the second gift shop of the day, where I bought all the things I'd successfully resisted buying at the first gift shop. Damn. When we were outside, we all stood in front of the house to take our pictures (we are shameless tourists) and then began the trek back to Trinity Church.

After several blocks (we were now getting very tired and sore) and crossing several dangerous intersections (oh, that reminds me: people here speed up every time we cross the streets, I swear to God. They'll speed up at the end of the street to see if they can hit us before we get to the other side. Even when they're stopped, they'll rev their engines to freak us out. It works.) we finally saw the steeple of Trinity Church rising into the blue sky. 

We followed the tree-lined path, past ageless tombs and headstones, to the entrance of the church. We ducked down through the tiny doorway and found ourselves inside the enormous, lovely building. We made our way toward the front of the church, where it was "requested" that we make a 50p "donation" to enter the area that housed the Bard's remains. Well, how could we say no? So, we reverently entered the chapel, where the floor marked the resting places of William and Anne Shakespeare, along with a few other important people of the day (who names I don't remember; my bad). We stood on the other side of the ropes and kneeled to the floor for photos in silent and awe. 

Oh, and as we were ogling Shakespeare's resting place: here come the Asian tourists, AGAIN! Flooding into the place. Honestly, it was so bizarre. Was this the follow-the-Americans tour?

So, we reluctantly left the chapel in order to catch our 5:20 train back to Birmingham. We took a different route back which was probably a bit out of our way, but along the way we met the River Avon! We stopped for a few pictures before trudging alllll the way back to the train station. Our train was a few minutes late, so we needn't have hurried.

Unfortunately, that made us miss the train we'd planned on catching from Birmingham to Cheltenham. However, we figured things out and caught another train about 45 minutes later. When we arrived back at Cheltenham Spa, we had to wait about 30 minutes for the uni bus. Oh, and it was COLD. From the time we got off the train, I couldn't get warm, not even on the bus. And I certainly wasn't getting any warmer as we walked back from the FCH stop to regency. It wasn't until I was in the kitchen with a cup of tea that I actually began warming up. 

All in all, we were really proud of ourselves, 3 American girls, for planning everything out and finding our way around a new place. Yay us!

Also:

I'm an English major. Stratford-on-Avon was my Mecca.