Friends, Romans, Countrymen – July 16th, 2009

This morning we did not have class, instead the whole group boarded a bus for Stratford Upon Avon – the home of one of the greatest writers history has ever seen and will ever see. So cool. Upon arriving, we had a short meeting with someone in the Shakespeare Institute to learn about the kind of research they do there, then were on our own for lunch. Subway. Mmm….so good. We walked around the city for a little while, then made our way to the theatre.

The whole group went to see Julius Caesar…and it was AMAZING. I was afraid I wouldn’t like it, since it’s one of my favorite plays to read but I was afraid I would think it was boring on stage, but definitely not. I adored it. It was a wonderful show.

After the show, we had more free time, so I ran over to Shakespeare’s birth place and managed to get in right before it closed. It was a pretty cool experience. Knowing I shared space with Shakespeare. Pretty cool indeed.

When I left I met back up with the girls, and of course everything was closing, since everything closes at 5 or 6 pm here…like everything. Except restaurants, of course. There was nothing to do, and our bus didn’t leave until 8. So we found this cute little Italian restaurant and actually ordered a nice meal for once, then just sat around talking and eating. It was expensive as all get out, but it was nice to have a nice meal instead of..Subway. Haha.

After dinner we grabbed some dessert at Sainsbury’s (our favorite grocery store) then meandered back to the bus for the ride home. We didn’t arrive back in Oxford until around 9:30, and we have to be up and leaving for Edinburgh at 7:30 in the morning, so we decided to stay in for the night. Eventually the aloneness in our room got to us so we headed down to the college pub for a little while – I can’t believe Candice beat me in darts…I was down to 3 and she was still at like 190, but then she came back and won because you have to hit your score exactly there at the end. She so got lucky, haha.

We didn’t stay out too late though, had to head home and be responsible and get ready to go to Scotland tomorrow!