on saturday the 10th of febuary 2007 the university of reading's international focus group organised a trip to stratford upon avon.. the birthplace of william shakespeare.. i wouldn't say that i m a real fan of his.. but i like some of his works, and a lot of his famous works have been made into movies like romeo and juliet, the taming of teh shrew, hamlet.. etc.. and a lot of movies have been made based on it as well... so anyway.. i thought that i would go, and see what it's like...

we were greeted by the river avon or is it avon river == it's kind of frozen over...well it is winter anywya.. don't expect to see much..

out first stop was this errr.. dunno wat to call it, show? it was like a lil summarise thing on shakespeare works, and life,... his birth etc...

there were some pretty things in the shop .. but pretty things are pretty on the wallet too.. so tehre are only pictures haha

fairy... midsummers night dream.. ring a bell? :p

looks like a ghost?? the shakespearience, gave like a theatre 3D show, where the showed some famous parts of differnt famous plays, here we have the merchant of venice... looks sacry in the pic.. but it was quite nice there it was like this "guy", was tyring to memorise some lines to one of shakespeare's play, then the "voice" of shakespeare came out, and then give all teh examples.. quite nice :) there were really nice effects like wind and thnder n lightning as well, when they were showing the macbeth part :p

the lamp post tehre is interesting as well haha... recognise where it's from?

the donkey is the clue.. it's from midsummers night dream haha.. so i do know my shakespeare right :p

this is teh theatre.. i think taht stratford is really worth going, if you are going to watch any one of the shakespeare plays, but's its pricey as well.. like £7-10? sigh..... but either than taht.. u can do wat we did and go to the shakesperiance thing or to shakespeare's birthplace, which is below.. we didn't go to anne hathaway's cottage (his wife,) cause it was far and we didn't have time..

one of teh decorations in the shakespeare birthplace, we enter a muzuim like place first before entering the house itself..

this was a model of the theatres that they said shakespeare used to act in :p

the birth place,, where he was born.. too bad it's winter.. i bet the garden is really pretty in srping/summer.. we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the house.. so sorry there are none, there wre ppl there to make sure we couldn't take pics, and to explain stuff to us.. and i learnt where the expression sleep tight came from :p
last time the beds were supported with strings, so it was like a hammock effect, so the tighter the strings, teh more comfy.. hence.. sleep tight :p

no idea wat this is, came across it when trying to look for the church where shakespeare is buried... it was at the end of wood st??

sign says it all...

outside of teh church..

the door is low, so you had to bend to go in.. security reason??

nice stained glass.. typical of all teh churches here.. got bored of churches here already... they are all simliar...

the stained glass above shakespeare's grave and the altar...

the figure of shakespeare, it was said taht teh person who made the figurine knew shakespeare personally, and so this cld b the closest u can get to the real person... when we came in there was a tour guide so we listened in, that's how we know haha... and tehre was the thing used to baptise shakespeare as well, and teh documents of his baptism and death...

his grave and coat of arms... a lot of ppl thing that the thing in the middle is a pen, as shakespeare was a poet.. actually its a spear.... apparently we were supposed to contribute £1.50 to go near the grave, but xian ai and i didn't realised, and we just walked right through hahah.... only when we left the church only i realised haha but oh well... now i know why tat guy gave us a funny look and asked what we were doing... haha

that is where u do brass rubbing, it's more like for kids, u noe all they do is like, have a template, u put a paper over and colour it.. like putting a coin udner a paper, and colouring it.. so that teh coin's featuere's come out.. same here.. but it was quite nice.. but pricey....

the statues near river avon.. depicting works from shakespeare here we hv lady macbeth... from the play.. macbeth..

the main statue...
crap.. i keep typing statue as statute.... == too much law liao...


haha this was at the bus stop... ;p

so that's all for now... xian ai and i took like 120 pics haha.. but i only put this few.. the rest are on facebook if u wanna c :p

-Oracl3-

ps nishikido ryo rocks!! hahah... well the character he plays in the dramas... does haha... :p
one litre of tears rocks.. so touching, and also attention please.. it's so funny it rocks too.. too bad cruncyroll has only uploaded till eps 9 only sigh....
i'll wait for it ahha... my weekend entertainment.... :p

大好き！！！