Monday 20 August 2007

Day 8 - Stratford-upon-Avon

Or "Strap-fon-A-von", as people in Birmingham pronounce it. (If you aim to reproduce the sound, stick some grapes into your mouth first)

I arrived in Birmingham under some extreme BBW, which mutated into blue skies just as I arrived to the hostel. With higher spirits, and recently found good company, I set out to discover the Shakespeare Town® theme park.

And it's exactly that. I would have liked getting on the Shakespeare Rollercoaster and eating Shakespeare Mints, but unfortunately everything was both expensive and closed. I forgot that whatever the weather, everything touristic closes at 17:00. D'oh!

So we took a walk around the town, saw Shakespeare's Birthplace (£6.50, closed), Shakespeare's House (£5.50, closed), His Daughter's House (£5.00, closed), The Church Where He's Supposed to be Buried (free, but just closed) and The Place Where He First Farted (fictitious, but closed anyway). The really cool thing to do is to go see a play by the Shakespeare Company, but of course that was also expensive, and closed (the building was being rebuilt or something) .

So when we exhausted the entertainment possibilities of an empty town with 4 (restored) old-looking buildings , we took the first train from an empty station and headed back.

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