Stratford upon Avon...

This last saturday was out last tour with Proscenium Tours! I was so sad to be done, because these tours have been amazing... but it was a great last trip. This one was simple day trip to Warwick Castle and Stratfor upon Avon, the hometown and final resting place of the bard himself - William Shakespeare!!

Our first stop was Warwick Castle. Warwick Castle was once the home of the Earl of Warwick, a key player in the War of the Roses. Since then every Earl of Warwick has lived in the Castle until the middle of this century when it was turned into somewhat of a Renaissance Fair of sorts. A great place to take small children... but also fun for adults



Inside the Castle there were exhibits contributed by Madame Tussaud's wax museum... We couldn't help ourselves from taking silly pictures with them








Quick nap time in the drawing room
And of course they had dress up for us!!!



We hiked up along the castle wall to the tall tours to catch the sweet views
And we found a sword in a stone... alas we could not pull it out. I guess I am not meant to be King of Britain
And a little taste of spring in the gardens
the stocks
After Warwick Castle we grabbed lunch and Phoebe and I got delicious pastries from a street market for the bus ride!!! One of mine was shaped like a swan

After Warwick Castle we moved on to enjoy the sights of Stratford Upon Avon. Shakespeare was born here and also chose to die and be buried here. Although he could have been buried in Poets Corner in Wesminster Abbey, we felt Stratford was a better place. As a result Stratford is a town filled with Shakespeare tributes. Almost every shop and tea room is named for a Shakespeare play or character.
This is the church where Shakespeare has his final resting place...
Shakespeare is buried here along with his wife Anne Hathaway and some of his descendants. Unfortunately for the Shakespeare family he only had daughters so the Shakespeare name died with him... and his line all together stopped with his great grand-daughter.
Shakespeare also placed a curse on his grave to any man who would dare mess with his bones.
This house is an original Tudor style house... it was the home of Shakespeare's daughter Susannah who married a doctor. Funny story - back in ye olden Shakespeare times, when one had a sore throat they would go to the doctor. The remedy was to hold your mouth open as the doctor held a frog over your open mouth and allowed it to secret a liquid into you throat. This would coat the throat and allow you to clear the scratchiness... this is where the saying "frog in your throat" came from. Disgusting!
This is the spot where Shakespeare house once stood... this is the house he owned when he died. A man who owned the home after him was so tired of people constantly visiting, standing out in front, and knocking on his door to request a trimming from Shakespeare's famous mulberry bush, that he burned it down... burned his own house down. The people in the town were so upset by this, they ran him out of town. Now there is a beautiful garden here instead.
The garden also has statues all over depicting some of Shakespeare's famous plays. They are artistic and abstract and so we had fun running around guessing which play it was without looking at the name.
Shakespeare's birth place

I didn't get any souvenirs from here... I feel like I have my fill of Shakespeare stuff already from the Globe Theater.
Lovely day though. I will miss these tours and miss Susannah, our tour guide, who is awesome and has been with us on every tour aside from Scotland. She is a wealth of information and she's fun as well!


Hope you enjoyed Stratford!