Today is the first real day of our holiday in the UK, as we spent less time on a plane and more time exploring (well…with a lot of driving!).
We woke up early in the morning to make our way to pick up the hire car we’d be using for the majority of our trip. After a short walk from the hotel with our luggage we checked in and picked up our car (a nice BMW!).
We quickly made our way out of the London area and started our way towards Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. After a short drive out, we decided to make a quick stop at Oxford to stretch our legs. The entire area is beautiful with old buildings. We had to make a short pitstop to check out the Bodleian Library gift shop (we didn’t dare go into the library proper, lest the rest of our travel plans would be passed over for immersing ourselves in Britan’s second largest book repository).
Once we arrived at Stratford-upon-Avon we had a quick bite to eat at a nearby cafe and entered Shakespeare’s Birthplace. The area is quite well setup with performances on the grounds every 20-30 minutes and guides scattered throughout. The house didn’t look that large from the outside but as we entered each room we realised how wrong we were. About halfway through we met up with a friendly guide who asked if we were “here for the festival?” Turns out that Shakespeare’s birthday celebrations were happening the following day! The streets would be closed off, with a parade running through. At first we were a little upset we were missing this, however it would have made it incredibly difficult to get in and out so agreed that it was probably for the best.
We finished up with a quick walk on the main street (of course Chantal found an antiques store!). We had to wrap it up fairly quickly for our next destination – Manchester.
We eventually made it to our final stop for the day, to our dear friend Kath’s place in Manchester.
Chris and Chantal 