Day #3 - To See or Not To See (02 June 2013)

Because we didn't get to sleep till 1 am and got up at 6 am, we felt like the walking dead. Several other tours were leaving out of the same hotel at the same time, so it was quite a mad house. We fit got onto the correct bus after we ran into our guide, Chris, and started up towards Stratford-Upon-Avon. We stopped at Anne Hathaway cottage, the wife of Shakespeare, and took a group photograph. The son of the photographer was there to make us laugh and he was so cute. Then we drove a little bit more and got to Shakespeare's birthplace. We toured his house, which I thought was really cool. I bought some things in the gift shop, including the best eraser I will probably ever own:

Get it? Ha ha ha. Anyway.

The town was pretty touristy, but we grabbed a bite to eat, withdrew some money, and made a stop at the loo. A lot of public places you have to pay to use it, but we beat the system by walking through the gate while it malfunctioned.

Next was York, about 3 hours from Stratford. The people next to us were very talkative and loud and then started talking politics. That made me roll my eyes. We're on vacation, please give it a rest.

When we arrived in York, we took a brief walking tour with Chris, only took about 15 minutes or so. If York were in the USA, they would be Texas: they are fiercely independent and sometimes consider themselves separate from the rest of the country. We had 2 free hours in York and the first thing we did was get some chips. And my goodness, they were amazing.

We walked down the Shambles, which is a pretty accurate idea of what streets looked like back in the olden days. Then we saw the York chocolate shop and we had to go in. We saw York Minster but we didn't go in because you had to pay, and looked at the wall that surrounded r city. After that we hopped back on the bus headed to Nelson's pub outside Harrogate for a Sunday Roast dinner with Yorkshire pudding (which is really just bread) and potatoes. I ordered the house ale to try and that was warm, terrible beer. But I drank as much as I dared anyway. We sat with some people from Toronto who were friendly. One of them was a girl my age. Then the dessert came, chocolate torte and cheesecake. After we went to the posh town of Harrogate. The people sitting next to us were loud and drunk so that was rather annoying. We got to the hotel, it wasn't nearly as nice as our last one, and the shower was confusing and they had pricey Internet. Other than that it wasn't terrible. We did a lot in the first day.

Till next time xx,

Sierra