Day 12: June 17, 2014

Well the day begins in beautiful Stratford where the Hostel provided us with a traditional English breakfast buffet that included toast, yogurt, cheese, baked beans, potato wedges, scrambled eggs, ham, sausages, and cereal. Not wanting to spend money on lunch for the day, I got a helping of everything except for the beans, ham, and cereal. There was an obvious difference in the way hat the food tasted. It was prepared less like breakfast food and more like  dinner food, specially the sausage and beans.

The day was a free day to roam around Stratford  with opportunities to visit the remaining 5 Stratford houses if we had not already seen them. I stayed mostly with Simone and Sarah, first we decided to go back to the church that Shakespeare attended for some pictures. Here are some of those:

 

It was a gorgeous church and the cemetery had a wonderful view over looking the river.

 

Afterwards, we ran into Austin who directed us to some of the Stratford houses that we had not been to. Here is the picture of where Shakespeare's house use to stand:

 

It's now a garden. After Shakespeare died, the house stayed in the family for a while, but was sold back to the original family that Shakespeare bought if from. They sold it to a pastor, who was anti-social and remembered as being rather odd. The pastor was rather annoyed that his house was a known tourist attraction along with a mulberry tree that was planted by William Shakespeare, so one day in a mad rage, he chopped down the mulberry tree. People still kept coming by, he finally burned down the house. It was the biggest house in Stratford and you can tell how big it was from how deep the property goes back.

 

Next door to where Shakespeare's house use to be, is his daughter's house that he left her and her husband. Her husband was a doctor and so there is an herb garden in the back yard to show the kind of herbs that he would have used to cure ailments at the time. Here are some pictures from the house and garden:

 

 

 

 

They had a dress up corner. It was suppose to be for kids, but it was still fun to try on some of the clothes.

 

Next we visited Shakespeare's granddaughter's house. This one is my favorite. I didn't take many pictures of the inside, because it mostly consisted of he same times of rooms, but the garden was breathtaking. There was even a statue garden with various statues that consisted of his most famous characters, works, and quotes.

 

 

 

 

They also had a dress up station. It was really fun.

 

These were on display as Shakespeare's10 most famous characters.

 

Here are pictures of some of the original houses of the Elizabethan era that are still standing and that people still work and go through everyday:

 

 

 

 After our tour we all left to go back to London. Most everybody slept on the drive back, but I read my favorite novel, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. When we go back to London, we all went to unpack and I went to hangout with Rachelle. That concludes the day.