To Be or Not To Be...

This past weekend my friend and I travelled to Stratford-upon-Avon to get in touch with our Shakespearian side of life! Stratford was an incredibly charming area with Tudor-style buildings and houses dotting the countryside and the village. Plus they had just turned on the Christmas lights the night before we arrived, so the entire town looked so cheerful with the Christmas spirit. They had lights strung everywhere, Christmas trees, Santa’s and all sorts of Christmas decorations hung. 

On Friday evening we knew everything would be closing soon after we arrived so we decided to get a nice dinner and go see a movie instead. We had an incredibly delicious steak dinner that evening with great drinks and appetizers. The restaurant was an old Tudor-building and we ate upstairs in the timbers by candlelight: talk about absolutely perfect! We sat there and talked for hours eating incredible food…oh and for dessert we split a lemon-raspbeery cheesecake and a pear-apple tart. After a great evening we walked to the Picturehouse (yes it’s not the movie theater, cinema, or theater…it was the picturehouse); which was a vintage-style movie theater with assigned seating, food and drinks bar and only three screens!! We saw James Bond: Skyfall (although I’d already seen it) and it was absolutely fantastic- loved it! That evening we returned to the inn we were staying in and got to watch, wait for it- TELEVISION! Yes. Never realized how long I hadn’t watched TV until I was actually watching “Ellen” and “FoodTV”; it was brilliant.

The next morning we started off right by having a full-English breakfast at our Inn. Straight after we headed into town to the Shakespeare Center and Birthplace where we got tickets to tour Shakespeare’s birthplace home. The home was actually extremely nice with adorable Tudor features and lots of room (for back then at least). It was cool seeing so many artifacts from William himself. 

Next we headed to the Nash House, which is the home in which William’s daughter Susannah and her husband Dr. Nash lived in. There was also a Christmas market going on that day and a small elementary school had come to serenade the crowd with Christmas carols: it was so precious! The house was decorated for Christmas, crackling fires in the hearth, and then the sweet angelic voice of children drifted through the house: adorable!

Our next stop was Holy Trinity Church which is where William Shakespeare’s is buried. The Church was gorgeous with beautiful stone work and carving work as usual. It had started to rain at this point and gave a somber mood to the Church; quite fitting actually. Oh, and one cool aspect is that they had a Tudor-dress up section inside of which, of course, we had to dress up! We then made our way down the long aisle towards the front of the Church where Shakespeare and his family is buried: his wife, daughter, and son-in-law all lay. It was surreal to think that one of the world’s greatest writers lay to rest right in front of my feet!!

Finally, we went to the house where William Shakespeare died, or what is left of it actually! It was actually demolished over a hundred years ago by a disgruntled and poor owner of the house, so they are still doing excavation of the area! Afterwards we bummed around town and did some shopping before having afternoon tea at a cozy and apparently, famous, tea room. Tea was quite yummy and definitely warmed us up a bit before we had to brave the rain again to catch a train back to Stoke! It was a great little trip :)  

Sunday Showers

Sunday morning myself and a few other girls in the block went and got free breakfast the university was offering at Hawthorns Restaurant. It was a ‘continental’ breakfast, which I thought would be like eggs, bacon, toast, and so forth but it was croissants and muffins! The whole room was decorated with Union Jacks and balloons which was cute!

Then a bunch of us went into campus to the sports fair and ‘freshers’ welcome fair where they had inflatables, live music, dancing, and a bunch of clubs and societies set up that you could talk to. I’m thinking about joining one called “Come Dine with Me” in which you rotate turns cooking a meal for your group. At the end of the term, there’s a winner who cooked the best (I think myself and another girl in my hall, Katie could possibly win).

After the girls ate lunch and we walked around for a bit, we decided to catch the bus into Newcastle to go shopping for groceries and stuff. Katie is from Newcastle so she kind of showed us around a bit. We stopped at a store called Morrison’s which is kind of like a grocery store with some random houseware items. One of the girls on my floor who’s actually a bit older than me, helped me around the grocery store along with her friend Nikki, teaching me the differences between all the foods (i.e. the difference between a biscuit, a cookie, a scone, a muffin, a cake, a cupcake) because believe it or not they actually are different than in the States! So I got some ‘ready’ meals such as bangers & mash, and shephard’s pie! Yum.

We walked around town for a bit before catching a taxi back to campus, and the town was so cute even though it started raining while we were there and most of it was closed because it was Sunday!

Tonight I went to Sneyd Arms Pub for dinner and had a tuna baguette with chips, at it was really good. The pub itself was really cozy and quaint and although I wasn’t up for it tonight, the desserts looked awesome! I’ll definitely be going back soon!! Well it’s raining and cold and almost midnight, so I’m off to bed :) Cheers!