Stratford

Lovely but exhausting day visting Stratford Upon Avon. Betsy is into all things Shakespearean at the moment, so we planned to just fit a visit in before the holidays end.

It was lovely and sunny and we had a picnic by the river, very picturesque, with buskers playing and painted barges bobbing in the water, and satues of Lady Macbeth, Falsaff, Prince Hal and Hamlet watching over us.

As well as a peculiar kind of home-made museum called Falstaff's Experience (filled with clapped out shop dummies drunkenly customised and surrounded by joke-shop props) we also dropped into a place called The MAD Museum, which was full of modern automotons and steampunk and kenetic art. It was small, cost a fortune to get in but it was really brilliant. It was packed full of amazing machines, very hard to describe, but really fun and interesting. Al loves working out how things are made, and how they work and he especially loved it.

After that we went to Shakespeare's Birthplace, which we all really enjoyed too. You can go into his house and see the bedroom where he was born. The children were fascinated by how people slept sitting up because they thought that if you laid down to sleep the devil would think you are dead and come and try to get your soul. How uncomfortable!

It was dark by the time we left, we were all exhausted! But not to tired to stop and queue up in one of the hundreds of quaint little tea rooms to bring home some cream cakes!