Stratford-upon-Avon

Friday, 8 November 2019

We woke up and headed down to breakfast.  We are not in too much of a rush today.  We are driving to Stratford-upon-Avon for the day.  We are going to walk around the town and then see a Shakespeare play, so it will be a late night, but I think there is only a few hours worth of stuff to see in the city and the play isn't until 7:30 PM.  So, after breakfast we went back to the room and relaxed a bit until the 10:30 AM check-out time.

It took us just over 1 hour to drive to Stratford-upon-Avon and arrived there just before noon.  We parked the car and headed into town for an Historic Walking Tour.  Our guidebook doesn't have a walking tour of this city, but I found a walking tour online that I downloaded.  Stratford-upon-Avon is best know at the hometown and gravesite of William Shakespeare.  Besides the Shakespeare sites, the half-timbered buildings make the town really nice to walk around.  Here are some highlights from the walking tour:

This is Shrieve’s House, and impressive 17th century merchant’s house.

Harvard House was built in 1596 and has amazing carved timbers with the initials of its builder, Thomas Roger, a wealthy local butcher.  Thomas was the grandfather of John Harvard founder of Harvard University, USA.

I like this sign...Shakesbeer...ha!

The nine-gabled Shakespeare Hotel was originally two 16th century houses:

The Guild Chapel was begun in 1269 by the Guild of the Holy Cross. The nave and the tower date from 1495, paid for by Hugh Clopton, a native of the town who later became Lord Mayor of London. Inside has remains  remains of medieval wall paintings that were very cool.

Mason’s Court, a 15th century building.

Ah...finally...here is the house that William Shakespeare's was born.

We were having flashbacks from our narrowboat holiday when we walked along the canal and saw these locks.

The last stop on the walking tour was the Church of the Holy Trinity.  This was the church the Shakespeare family attended.  William was baptized here in 1564 and was buried here in 1616.  Also buried next to him is his wife Anne.

When we left the church the sun popped out and Tim took these two really nice photos.

We then took the scenic route back into town along the RIver Avon.

This is the Royal Shakespeare Theater, right on the River Avon in town.  The play we are seeing today will be in that round portion of the building.  This is called the Swan Theater and has a seating capacity of 450.

It was now just after 4 PM.  We still have 3.5 hours till the play starts.  We walked back to the car to dropped off the backpack and went to our stand-by restaurant, JD Weatherspoon.  We had a pint and ordered an appetizer and eventually ordered dinner.  We left around 7 PM and walked across the street to the Swan Theater.

Tonight we are going to see the Shakespeare play "King John."  It is an historical play written by Shakespeare int he mid-1590s.  The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is using the original script, but has put a modern twist to the set, costumes, and role players (King John is played by a woman).

That is King John in the center of this photo.  By the way...I grabbed this photo from the website since, obviously, photos weren't permitted during the show.

This is a photo of the stage as we sat in our seats...second row, center.  I bought the tickets a few days before the play and there weren't many seats left.  I noticed these second row seats available, but the seat between them were taken.  i figured the person would move one seat over and let Tim and I sit together.  However, the woman refused to move, so Tim and I had to sit apart for the duration of the show...what the heck!

The play was actually really good, and the thought that I was watching a Shakespeare play in the birthplace of Shakespeare being put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company, put chills down my spine.

The play ended around 10:30 PM.  By the time we got back to the car and drove the 25 minutes to the AirBnB, it was after 11:30 PM.  We unloaded our stuff from the car and went right to bed.  Tomorrow we are supposed to do a hike and see some really nice towns in the Cotswolds, but it is supposed to rain, so we will see.