tales of a sailor lost at sea: England Day Three

Now I’m home and WiFi doesn’t cost £1- £5 an hour. Yippee skippee!!!

We checked out of the YMCA in Bath, but not after I held the door open for several scantily clad, Dutch rugby players*. After I got hit on in accented English, we drove to Chippingcamden, one of the oldest towns in England. After walking the streets, in a light drizzle, we got back in the car and went on to Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

The main drag of Chippingcamden.

Tiny door frame.

So jealous of their fresh milk/newspaper delivery.

Cool doorway.

[Sidenote: the restrooms in the YMCA are all the way down the hall from your dormitory, so these boys had just gotten out of the shower. Otherwise they wouldn’t be walking around half-naked]

There, we went on a tour of Shakespeare’s birth home and saw all of the rooms that he would have lived in (even after his marriage to Anne Hathaway when they were 18). When we were touring the house, we came upon some actors who were doing scenes from “Much Ado About Nothing”. They were really good and he was a little bit cute…

Billy Shakespeare. What up.

Birth home.

Something's not right.

Actors.

Creepin.

Pasties for lunch!

We had pasties for lunch and then we drove off to Shakespeare’s mothers’ home, Mary Arden Farm. We were greeted by a falconer, dressed in period correct clothes (hilarious), who had two owls that he showed us. One was a common barn owl and the other was this massive hook-beaked predator whose name I forget. When he was demonstrating with the barn owl, it landed on my back and dug in its claws and then flew over Henry and me. The farm had people working it and when we were there, the workers were cleaning up their lunch, feeding the animals and demonstrating the way life would have been. There were pigs, horses, ducks, geese, various birds, chickens, sheep, cows and goats. It was pretty fantastic.