Shakespeare and Swans: Stratford Upon Avon

For Easter weekend, myself and Lee decided we’d like to go away for a couple of days to somewhere in the UK that we hadn’t been to before, and, after a bit of deliberation, we decided on the home of Shakespeare and swans; Stratford Upon Avon. We went for two days and packed loads in, which I will now tell you about.

We got there on the Monday and went straight to pick up our Shakespeare passes (we wanted to see as much stuff as we could, and the passes had access to all five of the homes associated with Shakespeare, so we got those) from the Shakespeare Centre, and then we went into our first home; Shakespeare’s birthplace. It was a great exhibition, but, what made it even more special, was that there were two actors in the garden area doing live performances. We stayed and watched them for a good 20 minutes, and then we went to get lunch.

After we’d had lunch, we went to our second house; the New Place. This was where Shakespeare and his wife lived later in life, when he had started making a bit of money. The house itself is no longer there, however there is still an exhibition in there, which was worth a look round, and there were even photo props. After this house, we walked around for a bit, and then headed to our hotel and had some tea and a cosy night in.

The next day, we went to an adorable cafe for breakfast, and then decided to try and get to the other three houses. So we walked to Hall’s Croft, where Shakespeare’s daughter and her husband, a doctor, lived. There was a room with some old surgical equipment there, which was cool, and it was actually a very nice house. Then we went to Anne Hathaway’s cottage, which was a bit of a walk out of the centre, but it was a gorgeous day so we went. The cottage itself was lovely, and it has the infamous second best bed in, it was potentially my favourite of the houses. We never made it to the fifth house, because it was too far away, but we managed to get our money’s worth nevertheless. After the cottage, we wandered around back in the town, went in a few shops, had some tea and got the train home, having had a wonderful Easter.





Nic

xx