2 for the price of 1!

And i'm back... from a little sleepy town called Stratford-Upon-Avon, birthplace, living place, and now graveyard to the oh-so-famous William Shakespeare. the whole place is pretty small, and its main attraction is really only shakespeare, and a little more maybe. It has to be said that Stratford is pretty deep in terms of culture or rather, literature, with mostly the arty-farty people coming to visit, and to watch plays from the theatres. The most famous theatre there is called the Courtyard Theatre, which is owned by Royal Shakespeare Company - (apparently very very reowned for good plays) - but eugene, as you might have guessed, wasn't exactly the MOST interested like the play savvy "aristocrats". Probably the pictures can show you more about the place, we took quite a lot of photos, although the whole town is probably like 1.6km in circumference.

The more interesting, and fun aspects out of this trip, was an unexpected visit to Birmingham and trying to get to Stratford. In order to get the cheapest tickets here in UK, you need to specify certain times of travel from departing city to destination city and it will feed you with the cheapest tickets available at that point in time. So we needed to make several (about 3) changes in order to get to Stratford.

Leg 1: Manchester Piccadily to Stafford
Leg 2: Stafford to Birmingham New Street Station
Leg 3: WALK to Birmingham Moor Street Station
Leg 4: Birmingham Moor Street to Stratford-upon-avon

Leg 3 as you can see, is probably the hardest cos we had no idea where to get to Moor St Station, and the catch here is.. if you miss the train, "good luck mate". You probably need to get a new ticket. Anyway, thank God for helping us find the place relatively quickly and allowing our train to be delayed.. hahaha.. and so we managed to get to stratford pretty smoothly.

Since we arrived at around 8:30am in the morning, we had plenty of time to complete stratford, which was so small. As slow as we tried, we finished it by 11am.. so we had nothing to do until 4:27pm, until.... we found out that our train ticket had no time indicated on it. *smiles* we promptly hopped on to the next train going to birmingham at 12:27pm and TA-DA! We visited 2 places for the price of one ticket! haha.

Birmingham is really pretty and modern, its the 2nd largest city (in terms of population) after london, but recognized as 3rd, behind Manchester as being the "largest city" in UK. The only problem we faced was low batt on my camera. Since we started the day thinking only of stratford, we expanded the pictures pretty quick at Stratford, only to realise that we had just about 20 photos left. But my camera being so strong, managed to give us about 50 photos and a video of Birmingham. Some pictures don't really do justice to the beauty of Birmingham though.

So we walked around the city centre of Birmingham mainly to see some of the nicest buildings birmingham had to offer and we even had to chance to watch my man u match, courtesy of Ladbrokes who had a big screen for all passers-by! Okay.. enough rant, now for the pictures and videos:



Its generally a bad idea to get a train that leaves at 5:05am, but for the sake of saving a few pounds, whats some eye bags right?

Since we were at Stafford, might as well take a picture.. we don't even know where it is.

Actually we wanted a video of our "run" to birmingham moor st, but then we were so tensed up trying to find it, we forgot. Anyway, Moor St station is really old. Its scruffy looking and i heard an old lady say that she use to take trains here when she was YOUNG.

"..Falling! Fall on!"

Strange names they have here..

Here's the start of the walking tour. The Jester statue has many famous quotes from William Shakespeare

The birthplace of William Shakespeare

He has his own centre. Its more like a museum and a repository where they keep his works. Many scholars still come to trawl through these "treasures".

Hehe.. just having some fun.. (:

Wenqi, outside the entrance to his birthplace

Next stop, Avon Boating. I think the river is called Avon River, there we found really cute green-head ducks and white swans.

Behind wenqi are "boat shops". They sell anything from souvenirs to ice cream.

A look down River Avon

This was supposedly an attraction, Shakespearience. Sounded so cool right? So we walked in...

...only to be CHEATED! Its an eatery. But it was strangely packed for a early saturday morning.

Was taken along the path by River Avon. We were headed for Courtyard Theatre

A look up river avon. thank God for good weather. It was suppose to rain in the entire of UK. we only had a slight drizzle for a short while when we were there. I heard my friend's roadtrip to Wales was spoilt cos of the rain today.

Courtyard Theatre. See more in the videos below!

Next Stop: Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church

this is it. Holy Trinity Church. And yes you guessed it.. its tombstones standing behind us. And they were people who walked the earth some 300 years ago... haha.. sounds like dinosaurs.

Wenqi's hair like longer hor? haha.. sorry quite random.

Yes, this way to his grave. it was only 20 metres away

There you go.. thats his tablet. He is buried next to his daugther, and wife and some family members

Some other attractions around town.. Brass Rubbing is like rubbing something to get brass. didn't stay too long to find out.

Halls Croft is the home of Dr John Halls. Supposedly famous for some medical stuff. I'll ask wenqi later and fill in the blanks.

"I wanna go in..." But we thought it was pointless to pay so much to go see some stoopid garden.

The local district council

"HAO LIAN!" Scholar only mahh.. scholar not human ah? (:

And so I end this part of Stratford with Wenqi's genre of buildings here.. the Medevial buildings with clock towers

Welcome to Birmingham!

The Council House

The bridge linking the Museum Art Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art (something like that)

Wenqi can't read maps to save her life, so thank God for eugene.

wenqi thought it was pretty cool to sit on the ball, so she wanted some part of the action.

This picture has a very funny story behind it. See the guy behind me, he's the security guard of the council house, and no photos are allowed. stoopid wenqi didn't tell me he was behind and eugene was like *twizzzz* then i turned around and saw him look sternly at me and shaking his head. I was like "oops...". then being me, I "thick-skinnedly" ask him where's St Thomas Peace Garden. hahahhahaha.

This is it. After spending 20 minutes looking for something which was suppose to be only 50 m away, St Thomas Peace Garden turned out to be crap. Just a bunch of flowers in a trough. Bah!

Wenqi's new friend. This guy championed democracy in Birmingham a long, long long time ago.

Finally, something with "proof" that we've been to Birmingham!

As mentioned, wenqi and her favourite Medevial type church with clock towers. She said she liked it cause its green. Well my dear, its moss and algae!

Birmingham had Farmers' Markets too! Much better than the Stratford one.

Look at that.. so nice. and it was cheap too!

a scottish piper in the background.

Finally, the end of the post. I'm really drained.. exactly how we felt when we climbed up the train to Manchester Piccadilly.

It has been fun, running around all over the place. Starting to get tired of UK already. haha. Most stuffs look the same. Anyway, I really miss Nasi Lemak and Mee Fen and Char Kway Teow...

I miss you loads too parents.

See you when I see you.

Love