Youval and Roni's English Adventure part 3

So I realize that this is terribly delayed and I waited too long to post this but oh well, here you go. So when I last left you, we were planning on going to Stratford. Well, we did. We missed our train by about a minute, so we had to wait for a little bit for the next one, but we arrived in Straford-upon-Avon (after having listened to the Reduced Shakespeare Company on the way) and headed for the Shakespeare Birthplace. They start you off with a sort of audio-visual show about Shakespeare's life and body of work and, we are both pretty sad to admit, we were most excited when they showed a clip of the Shakespeare Code episode of Doctor Who. Anyways, we went straight from the video show into the Birthplace, the house owned first by Shakespeare's father and then by Will himself. This is where Shakespeare was born and grew up. They have lots of period furniture and have redone the wallpaper in the way that it is believed it was during Shakespeare's life. Another cool aspect of the house was that there is a window in which people have scratched their names as they visited the house throughout history. There were some really famous visitors there including Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens.

After the Birthplace we went to Nash's House, where Shakespeare lived later in life and where his daughter lived. The Shakespeare Trust is currently conducting a dig and excavations at Nash's House (also known as New Place) and therefore you could see the work they were doing. It was pretty cool to see where they were digging.

As we walked from Nash's House to Hall's Croft, the skies opened up. To be fair, it didn't rain very hard, but since the forecast didn't say rain, we didn't have umbrellas. So, we got a bit wet, but we made it to Hall's Croft without melting. Hall's Croft was where Susanna, Shakespeare's daughter, lived with her husband, Dr John Hall, lived. This house was a really good example of an upper middle class house of the time and it was extremely well preserved/refurbished to show the furniture and layout and kitchen and bedrooms etc of houses at the time.

After Hall's Croft we went to the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity, where Shakespeare and the rest of his family are buried. On his grave, Shakespeare wanted the following quote displayed: "Blest be the man that spares then stones, but curs'd be he that moves my bones."


The next day, we decided to go back to London and see a bit more of the city. We started out at Covent Garden to buy some discount show tickets for that evening, and met Brian for some Indian food for lunch. Youval actually liked it which was a huge surprise! After lunch we headed south to the Imperial War Museum.
Housed in the old Bethlem Hospital, know as Bedlam for the similar sounding name and the fact that it used to house patients with mental illnesses, the Imperial War Museum is HUGE and has soooo much stuff.
We started in an exhibit that talked about the life of children in London during World War II and discussed the evacuation of the children, their lives out in the country, their experiences in the blitz, challenges of clothing and food rationing and many other aspects of life of children's life.

Are you my mummy? Seriously, this is like the exact outfit worn in that episode...

Following the Children's exhibit we went up to the Holocaust exhibit. I've been to the LA, Washington DC, and Israel versions of Holocaust museums but I was quite impressed with the London one. I always have a hard time explaining visits to Holocaust exhibits because they're never enjoyable, but I do quite like going to them. It was very well done and effectively evoked many emotions which I think is the purpose of most of those exhibits and museums.

Following the Imperial War Museum we headed north again to the Sherlock Holmes Museum. It is a total tourist trap that is completely kitchy and silly but we like Holmes too much to pass it up. We didn't stay too long there (because its pretty small) and afterwards we walked back toward Tottenham Court road, got some amazing pizza from by Brian's house, and then met Brian, Kristen, and some other Lakenheath/Mildenhall AF people for dinner at the Chipotle near the Dominion Theatre. Following dinner we headed over to the theatre for We Will Rock You. This show couldn't be more diametrically opposed to Les Miserables. Whereas Les Mis is the quintessential Broadway/West End show, We Will Rock You is really more of a rock concert. The singers were amazing, the story is great, and the songs are so incredible. We really enjoyed the show and then headed back to Oxford that night planning on going to Brighton the next morning.

Well, that didn't quite happen. Youval needed to get some laundry done and so we put in a load of laundry and set it to dry at the end of the cycle. Following the end of the cycle, the clothing wasn't quite dry so I reset the machine to just dry. When it finished, it was soaking wet and steaming hot! We couldn't figure out what had happened. I assumed I had just reset the machine wrong and so I tried again. IT HAPPENED AGAIN! Basically, the day became wasted with an epid battle with the drier that ended with us just taking the clothing wet, going down to Brighton, and hanging the clothing to dry on our hostel beds. We arrived in Brighton really late so we didn't get to see much in the evening but were planning on just spending the day at the beach the next day.

The next day was perfect for a day at the beach. We woke up early and headed down to the pier but because we were so early, the pier was not yet open. We sat on the water for a little while but since we don't really like rocky beaches, as soon as the pier opened we went up and wandered the pier. Its really really big and has an amusement park on it, similar to Santa Monica pier.

We took advantage of the free deck chairs they provide on the pier and just sat out in the sun, dozing off a bit.

In order to get inside out of the sun for a little while we went and visited the Royal Pavillion. Built by George IV when he was Prince Regent, this palace is modeled after China (even though nobody who designed it had ever been to China). The exterior looks more Indian but the inside (which you couldn't take pictures of) definitely had the Chinese feel to it with bamboo and dragons, etc.The Pavillion really was an extravagent pleasure palace and it made sense why Queen Victoria, who had a large family, decided that she didn't need the palace and decided to sell it. The City of Brighton bought it (a brilliant idea really) and now they own and operate the building. All of the furniture inside, however, is from the period and is on loan from Buckingham Palace with permission of the Queen.

We wandered around a bit more, seeing the Brighton War Memorial, and then went back to the Beach, got some chips for lunch, got some ice cream in the afternoon, and got the realization that we were very sunburt. We staying in the shade after that, just killing some time before heading back to the hostel to get our backs and then to the train station to take the train back to London where we would stay the night before heading off to Switzerland.

Brighton War Memorial

Old West Pier that was destroyed by fire

The plan was to get up early, get to the airport, and fly to Switzerland to meet our parents. The first part happened, the second part happened, and then it sort of fell apart..... More to come on that soon........