September 23 - London

Did a tour of Warwick castle, Stratford upon Avon and Oxford today. Warwick castle was a bit of a wank. The actual castle itself was nice, but they stuck all these wax figures in it pretending to do castle-y stuff and it was kind of cheesy. They had a real working trebuchet on the castle grounds but we couldn't stay for the actual show.

Our next stop was the town of Stratford on the Avon river. It was such a cute little town. Shakespeare was born and died here and everything was about him in this place. Everyone went for lunch but I ate on the bus so I had an extra hour to wander around there and see the place. I went over to New Place which was the house where Shakespeare died and they left the foundations of the house there with a garden. They have all these bronze Shakespeare play figures too. I also saw the theater where the Royal Shakespeare Company performs but it was being renovated.

Avon River was SO cute! There are all these ducks and barges and a market along the banks and yeah. I liked it a lot. I also went to the Shakespeare birthplace and it was really amazing how they crammed their entire family into this house, plus their doorframes were really small (I still didn't have to duck though, but most people did). The coat of arms for the shakespeare family has a yellow background with a silver spear on it, but when I first saw it I thought it was a fountain pen (which would be kind of fitting, but oh well).

Then it was on to Oxford. Holy crap. I want to go there SO badly for my PhD program. It was sunday so I couldn't go and check out the department and stuff, but I still got to wander around and the atmosphere was awesome. I saw the dining hall in Christ Church College which was used in the Harry Potter movies and there was a big portrait of John Locke in there! He is an alumnus! That was pretty cool. Anyway, then it was time to go back to London and meet with the Contiki people (most of whom seemed loud and drunk already).