Thursday

We started our day by getting our luggage into the coach so we could check out of our hotel. We're spending our last night at a hotel closer to the airport, since we need to be there at 5am. Another example of our fearless leader looking out for us.

We went to the Anne Hathaway cottage, which is one of the Shakespeare trust houses. We learned about her family and how after she and billy shakes got married, she moved out into his parents house with him, but still stuck around near the family. There are still Hathaways in Stratford now, but have obviously since given up the house.

Everyone is so eager to talk about how she was so much older than Shakespeare and 3 months pregnant when they were married, and on top of that they had to rush the ceremony because it was too close to Christmas. I think we should just leave her alone and let her be his wife, without always needing to add some comment about how scandalous they were. Although it does make some of his plays a little more irnonic, like the tempest, when monologues about keeping a virgin knot are so passionately written. Message received, William.

Next we went to the church Shakespeare was baptized and buried in. His birthday was fairly recent, and there were flowers EVERYWHERE in honor of him. In the baptismal font, on his grave in the church, all over the altar...flowers from all over the world. It was very pretty.

Our last show, a matinee, was "the tempest". It was Shakespeare's last play, and there's a lot of speculation about him projecting himself into the main character and dealing with retirement, essentially. It had the same actress I didn't care for last night, which womped, but the play itself was still good. Not one of my favorites, but it's kind of intense and really long, so you have o be in the right mood.

It's a 2 hour coach ride to London from Stratford, but we couldn't find our hotel and the very Scottish bus driver was all sorts of riled up. He made every trip a colorful one, that's for certain. It took an extra hour to get to the hotel, so everyone was a little surly, but then we had our final pep talk from Marc and parted ways. It was weird, being so close to the airport and hearing the planes that eventually I would be joining tomorrow.

I don't do ends very well, so even though I should have gone to bed early, Meghan and I ended up just staying up and fretting until we passed out for what could only fairly be called a nap, since shortly after we got our wake up call at 4am to get downstairs and off to the airport!