Get Thee to a Nunnery!

So epic fail about updating the blog.

But here I am, to at least partially rectify this. Let’s summarize two weeks ago.
Hampton Court. King Henry the Eighth jacked it from Cardinal Woolsey when they were in a row. Plants that look like mushrooms. Decorations made out of guns. Oldest grape vine in Europe.

Cardiff. See my other entry for all the wonder that was Cardiff.

Victoria and Albert Museum. Dresses of all shapes, colors and sizes. Sweet courtyard. Free Wifi. Discovered that epitaphs are the best poetry of all. Learned how a clever lock works.

Wicked. Helen’s birthday. Singing Popular loudly on the tube. Fan girling with Sarah about our OTP, Fiyero and Elphaba. Stayed out late. Woke up at 6 the next morning. Brain=mush.

Well that was probably the most ineffectual sum up ever, but there was far too many things going on to remember all of them in great detail. I think looking at pictures would help but my camera is all the way on the table four feet from me. And besides, we have something ELSE to focus on…

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON!

Yes, that’s right. Shakespeare’s pad. Where good ol’ Will was mischievous in his childhood, hella rich in his adulthood and skipped around town like everyone is wont to do in Stratford. Because it’s awesome. And awesome towns inspire frolicking (the non-sexual kind…apparently that was a medieval euphemism for ::insert other euphemisms::; you know, the other type of frolicking... eh? Eh?)

Anyway, we started off at Mary Arden’s house (Shakespeare’s mum’s house…you know, like the Arden Shakespeare editions of plays? Oohh, nothing gets past me!) just outside Stratford. It was a preserved 16th century farmhouse, with animals and everything! (the animals were rather newer than the 16th century as far as I knew. But I’m open minded. This is the country of the Doctor, after all…) We awwwwed at baby lambs and I was told about a cool British tv show by a guy who worked there wearing a funny hat and pantaloons. It was informative.

We then traveled further towards town and saw Anne Hathaway’s cottage (Shakespeare’s wifey). I saw one of Shakespeare’s beds and fan girled and then I saw one of Shakespeare’s benches and fan girled, and then I touched one of Shakespeare’s pillars as I almost fell down the stairs and fan girled and then I realized I was walking on Shakespeare’s steps and rounded out the entire occasion with an appropriate “GUH, SHAKESPEARE!!!” and fan girled. We then took a pleasant walk through the woods, Katie stole another daffodil, and I recited Shakespeare a la Catherine Tate. I then visited the shop (Oh, I love a little shop!) and bought baby Hamlet (a mini-Hamlet book) and some tea because it said Shakespeare tea. Marketers were laughing giddy laughs as I purchased said tea. Yes, ok, I’m a sucker for marketing when it comes to Shakespeare, Doctor Who, British things…like this whole country. So sue me.

Then it was bed and breakfast stop to drop off our crap (and it was ADORABLE!), had lunch and then went to Shakespeare’s birthplace. It was like Disneyland only less lame and full of Shakespeare. So nothing like Disneyland, really. But it did have doors that opened automatically. Anyway, we went through this forest of Shakespeare goodness and artifacts and got shown video clips of Sir Ian and Judy Dench and Kenneth Branagh being awesome. And then, we get to the last room. The Room of All Things Good and Goodified. We got to see this last video “Oh, Shakespeare, he’s so great. Look, this is where he was born. You wish you were Shakespeare, don’t you? So do we. So does everyone else. Oh, and HERE IS DAVID TENNANT!” So yeah, that so happened. Of course, a couple of my friends are like, Hey, that’s David Tennant isn’t it? And I’m like OMG OMG OMG YES and he’s playing my literary crush, Hamlet. My day has been made. Boom. But then, they showed a clip of DOCTOR WHO. Season 3, episode 2, of course. By this time, of course, my entire 25 person group knows how OBSESSED I am with Doctor Who. All of a sudden, I feel 25 eyes on me as they hear the words Doctor Who and I start dancing like a lunatic and I felt I had done my job as a fan girl to scare, amuse and intrigue all at the same time. Boom.

I then posed with a pic of David Tennant being Hamlet on the way to the non-Disneyfied Shakespeare’s birthplace and had to fan girl all over again. As you may imagine, I was quite tired at the end of this experience from all the fan girling. Seriously. My brain felt explosive-y from fictional character/old skool celebrity loving. Shakespeare was totally a celeb.

We then signed a book saying, HA WE SAW SHAKESPEARE and watched some players act out the “get thee to a nunnery” scene from Hamlet in the courtyard. You can probably guess what I had to do. Again. It was then time for an epic Peter Walk, and we saw the place where a CRAZY dude tore down Shakespeare’s House of Wonder that he bought with money he made by being completely awesome (which, of course is the best way to make money.) and built so he could eat Awesome Toast and drink Awesome Tea, and go to Awesome sleep and write Awesome Plays. Which he did all of, most assuredly.

We then went to where Shakespeare is buried in a beautiful church across town and took pics and learned cool facts about stained glass. Apparently, bright colored stained glass means it was medieval and darker stained glass indicates Victorian style decoration. I prefer the medieval, personally, but if I was accused of biasedness, it wouldn’t be unwarranted.

We then traipsed over to see Antony and Cleopatra at one of the RSC’s theatres and spent a lovely evening analyzing the play and watching Kathryn Hunter be spectacular as Cleopatra and I, of course, fan girled more. You may think that the end of the play was also an end to the fan girling. Alas, you would be mistaken. David Tennant was EVERYWHERE in that playhouse. Seriously. His face was all over the walls because it was the stage he had performed Hamlet nigh on last spring. Of course, I fan girled AGAIN and careened downstairs to ravage the gift shop. But it was closed! And I saw a brilliant poster of him in Love’s Labours Lost. LOVE’S LABOURS LOST! GAH! Have no fear, we will be going back soon and I will get my David poster. I know you were worried.

I also discovered milk in a pouch. Milk. In a pouch. A pouch of milk. Pouch. Milk. There is no end to the wonder.