Europe Day 4 – Stratford upon Avon

Vanessa and I woke up early this morning (6:00 am). We needed to walk about a ½ mile to the train station so we could catch the train to Stratford upon Avon. Stratford upon Avon is Shakespeare’s birthplace and where he is buried. Once we arrived at the train station we spoke to the lady at the ticket window, which is when we discovered the train no longer left out of this station, but instead went out of a station nearby. We jumped on the tube (no jokes please) to get to the proper station. We arrived with about 30 minutes to spare. The train is comfortable and moves fairly fast, 75 mph according to my GPS). Unfortunately it stops quite often, so it will take about 2 ½ hours to go the 100 miles.

I am a little frustrated with my GPS set-up. The United States mapping software works perfectly. The Europe mapping software detects the GPS sensor is attached, but it is not relaying any of the information. So far I am using a combination of the two. The US mapping shows Europe, but without any detail. I am hoping to have this figured out before we need to drive in Germany. It will still be okay, but it will be much easier with the GPS.

We spent the day walking around Stratford upon Avon. It was a nice sunny day and it’s a really nice town. We visited Shakespeare birthplace, his daughter’s house and his granddaughter’s house. It was about as exciting as it sounds. We were disappointed when we reached the church he is buried in. They were closed. Everyone else around us seemed a little upset as well. We didn’t have time to pout, because we had a tour of the Royal Shakespeare Company starting soon. The tour was pretty good and allowed us to go into the theatre, backstage, and on the stage of two Shakespeare theatres that are back to back (share the same backstage).

After the tour we were starving. It was 2:30 pm and we hadn’t eaten lunch. We walked down one of the streets until we found a little French restaurant. I had a Steak sandwich on a baguette with a glass of wine. Vanessa had French Onion Soup (the best she had ever had, with the best cappuccino she had ever had. The garlic bread sticks weren’t that great. Afterward we ordered Crepe Suzette for desert. It was a crepe with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and covered with an orange sauce and some slices of orange on the sides. Damn good!

When we left we only had about 10 minutes before the train left (oops!). We walked as fast as we could. We couldn’t see the train ant the station, but trains in Europe are always on time. Exhausted and with our lungs burning we entered the train station. I was about 30 feet in front of Vanessa. Sure enough, the train was there, but on a different set of tracks. I ran up the stairs to cross to the other side of the tracks. The train was already loaded and only two doors remained open. I stood in the doorway hoping they wouldn’t close the door with me standing there. Vanessa appeared and we both jumped onto the train. We collapsed in our seats and the train pulled away. Close one. If we would have missed the train, there was another one leaving two hours. It was a two hour ride back on the train. Vanessa and I watched the movie Dodgeball on the laptop to pass the time after playing cards for a while. There is a part in the movie when a kid gets hit in the head with a wrench. Vanessa hadn’t seen the commercial, so she started laughing hysterically. Everyone in the train turned around to see what was going on (we had our headsets on so they couldn’t hear). Watching her laugh made me start laughing and my laughing made her laugh even harder. We were both crying. After about two minutes of this we settled down again.

After going back to the hotel we went downstairs to get dinner. I had a Hawaiian pizza and Vanessa had some Penne Pasta with pesto sauce. It was pretty good. Afterwards we headed up to the room to pack.