Hello dearest readers!
Wednesday I was lucky enough to go on a trip to Stratford-upon-avon and England was sweet enough to let the sunshine all day. However, I was duped by Hollywood yet again.
Let me start at the beginning.
We took a wonderful (read: absolutely crazy) two and a half hour bus ride from London to Stratford. This bus ride wouldnāt have been nearly as crazy if the bus hadnāt been SO SMALL. So we took a 16 passenger bus with 15 people butttttttttt there is no air conditioning and as much as we all like each other, even that was a little too close courters. It takes absolutely forever to get out of the actual city of London to get to the freeway so we were baking alive in this bus stuck in traffic and the whole situation had just become ridiculous.
After about 5 minutes I and my seatmate proceeded to lose it. Our RA tried to calm us down but all we could do was laugh hysterically and complain. We made the bus ride amazing, obviously. And the real kicker is we are taking the same type of bus up to the Lake District in a monthās time and that is a 6 or 7 hour trip. Please, pray for us because we are going to need it. And to stop like every 2 hours.
Oi.
Iām not really complaining, Iām just stating some facts. Itās going to be amazing and so much fun and I canāt wait because these are the stories memories are made of!
Stratford itself is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. We ate lunch by the river and had to fight off the various ducks and swans when eating our own lunch and then proceeded to attempt to nicely feed themā¦which only sort of worked. There was this bully swan and if the swans werenāt royally protected we would have talked more hatefully it to but we were afraid the Queen would hear us.
Our theatre teacher was kind enough to get us tickets to go into all the Shakespeare houses so we got to see where he was born, where he lived with his wife, and where he was buried. It was a really strange experience because Iāve read Shakespeare, as many of us have, for years and years and years and to be kind of where it all startedā¦itās hard to put into words. As much as I dislike Shakespeare at times it was still great. I appreciate him a little more. And Iām sure being in Europe helps a bit too!
To reward ourselves from finishing all our āhomeworkā we rented rowboats and took a sweet little row on the river.
Not.
Hollywood lies! I donāt know how many of you have actually tried rowing a boat but itās really hard! We had the boat for about an hour and within that hour we almost got run over by the river cruise boat, crashed into our friends in their boat 3 separate times, crashed into a wall, crashed into a STATIONARY boat, almost capsized, almost killed a duck, was almost attacked by a group of swans, and attracted a rather large group of people to watch our boating spectacle.
Oh Noah how did you make it look so easy and sexy in The Notebook?
Iām sure we are on Youtube somewhere. Iām going to look later but Iām scared. It was truly an experience because in the moment that we almost capsized I knew what the people on the Titanic must have felt like. There was actual water coming over the side of our little rowboat and the shallow thought running through my mind was: āNot today! Iām wearing suede boots!ā
So if that teaches you anything about meā¦.think the opposite!
Overall it was a truly memorable day. I got some sweet souvenirs and the boat ride of my life. I would say that is a pretty successful day.
Next Friday I begin my adventure with the fab four to Spain and Italy! Iām on a pasta eating hiatus until then and itās killing me.
Have a great weekend my lovelies!
Cheers,
PaigeĀ Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā