Today I shall recount today and yesterday. Because I didn't blog yesterday. Because I... was lazy. Really, no excuse.
So yesterday started kind of early. I had an Earl Grey (TEA TALLY:4) and we headed out to Stratford-Upon-Avon, about a two hour drive from Manchester. The weather in England is kind of perpetually threatening rain, and we had the good fortune of experiencing a proper downpour right when we arrived to Stratford. It was fun. My jeans became clean.
The first part of the day was spent going on the City Tour bus and finding out where to go. We stopped at Anne Hathaway's cottage and gandered at the prettiness of it. It is what it is: a well-kept house a couple miles off from town with creaky floors and a zebra motif. Zebras are cool. The Tudors sure knew that. Anne Hathaway's also had an enormous garden with like every kind of British horticultural marvel ever. There was also a willow hut, a place made for people suffering from unrequited love to go whine to themselves without bothering others and heal. It was pretty and they played Shakespearean love sonnets in it. It was raining too hard for me to take pictures.
From there we hopped on the bus again and took it out to Mary Arden's farm, the home of Shakespeare's mother which has been converted into a Tudor life museum, complete with the "sights and smells of a real Tudor farm." There were sights and smells alright, and pretty much right away we stopped in the cafe and I had my first meat pie. My dad and I sang part of "A Little Priest" from Sweeney and we concluded that it couldn't be poet because we KNEW it was deceased. We're so cool.
Oh, and I had like two cups of tea.
TEA TALLY: 6
After eating we walked around the farm, definitely the highlight of the day. By then the sun was shining, and we were all happier because we got food. Food makes people happy.
Highlights within the visit included meeting a goat that could shake hands, honking at geese who were too cool to honk back, and seeing an array of falcons and owls that they kept there for falconry shows and... owl stuff?
We were bothering them in the middle of their night. They seemed pretty pissed off. I would be too if I had someone taking pictures of me whilst I slept. Especially if they were muttering aloud if I was alive of not.
From there we went to the gift shop where I received (from my parents. So glad to be traveling with people who have $ufficient mean$) three different smelling hand-made soaps. I sniffed them until my head got tingly.
The last stop on our journey was Shakespeare's birthplace, which had this really cool tree.
It also looked like this.
It also had a bunch of multimedia presentations, which took about 15 minutes our time. The last part of it detailed famous people who had done something significantly Shakespearean. Many were obvious: Dame Judy Dench, Laurence Olivier, Akira Kurosawa, and....
Not even Shakespeare can escape a Dr. Who reference.
We finished the night by going to a restaurant on the river, where I had delicious gammon (think really really good Canadian bacon) and two cups of tea (TALLY: 8). So good, so worth getting back at like 11 for. We spent the whole day in Stratford basically, and we could have definitely been there longer. Oh well. It seems like the theme of this trip is "So much to do, so little time, and so much tea."
Today we went to Wales. Before we went to Wales I had a cup of Earl Grey.
TEA TALLY: 9.
Also before going to Wales, I slept. When I woke up we were by an 18th century vitaduct and aqueduct. Aqueducts brought water. Vitaducts carried freight and stuff.
We walked along it and went into a 421 meter tunnel. This was the end. I used my camera's preview screen for light.
People go on the aqueducts on these canal boats that you can rent out for however long and just go through all the canals. The canals go everywhere in England. The same canals we saw in Stratford yesterday are connected to the ones that we saw in North Wales today.
And then I fell asleep.
When I woke up we were on the coast of North Wales in a town called Conwy. It boasts the majestic Conwy Castle, which was built in the 13th century and where we spent maybe like 2 hours walking up and down and taking pictures. I am only gonna post two. Because otherwise this post will just be too darn long.
After that we walked the entire wall around the city, which isn't all that long because Conwy is a succinct (? for lack of a better word) city. You have restaurants and the castle and shops within the walls and you live outside them. Also there's a lot of Welsh.
This is Welsh on the top. It looks like gibberish but when spoken it sounds like English that you just don't understand. It's quite disorienting actually. It's like your mind is constantly on search mode for words you may know, but you will know NONE.
Before I forget I must recount what I did BEFORE going to the castle. We went to a hotel that had been there since 1600 because the local authorities were like, "Gee, we need to accommodate people in our dinky dink town. Who needs a monastery? GTFO MONKS." And that's how it got started. I did approve of it though. I got my first burger in about three months and drank two cups of Earl Grey.
TEA TALLY: 11.
We also went to a sweet shop where I got wine gums. I like wine gums. They're like DOTS, but better and actually resembling fruits.
After castling and walking and wine gumming we headed over to a resort town called Llandudno. I will have eternal respect to anyone who pronounces it correctly the first time. Llandudno was a sweet little place on the sea where old people like to vacation. Two things struck me about the town:
1. Its French Riviera-ness.
2. PALM TREES?!?!
Neither of these things were expected encounters in Wales. But I had never been to Wales, so I really hadn't expected anything.
We went to a hotel and I drank two cups of Breakfast tea.
TEA TALLY:13.
And then I came back here. The end.
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