A little adventure

This weekend myself and catt had a lovely trip out of london to Stratford-upon-avon (as opposed to Stratford, London where I live) and Warwick. Stratford is a lovely little place, with streets full of delightful historical buildings from a lot of different periods of history. Theres a pretty river! And pretty trees! And lots of little delightful bookshops to lose myself in. Although the books weren't cheap. I managed other shopping though - I found a spice rack!!!!! After years of searching, they actually exist. And I found a really really cheap delightful purple woolly top that's fluffy fluffy purple purple and is so me! Did some brass rubbings (now pinned up in my bedroom) and went and had a look at Shakespeare's grave. Found a wonderful Pizza Express restaurant in a really ancient house that had the original timber beams crisscrossing it - reminded me of my room in Cambridge. Saw the opening night of this year's production of Antony and Cleopatra and loved it to bits - Its a play I'd neither seen nor read before so I'd no idea how enthralling it would be. Fab, and scary in places too!

Sunday we went to warwick to visit the castle. It's awesome and I'd recommend it to anyone. Over 1000 years old and still intact, this castle has everything - towering walls to climb up and walk around - a ghost tower (which is more laughable than anything else but still fun), dungeons, armorys, poncey posh state rooms and even the newly restored working mill. It's very very pretty and takes an entire afternoon to look around it properly. Only downside its that it's been turned into a tourist trap, but if you look past that you'll find a really admirable piece of history. A totally enjoyable day!

A foolish anecdote

Yesterday I was doing a lot of traveling. I had a ticket allowing unlimited train travel between Stratford, Warwick, Leamington and London. Got to Stratford station and found a sign saying there would be no trains running that day between the stations of (yes, you guessed it) Stratford, Warwick, Leamington and London. The entirely validity of my ticket in other words. They could have informed me of this fact when I bought the ticket!!! I was a tad annoyed.

Later in the day, I was trying to get from Warwick to Bicester (where the trains were running to London from). I waited outside Warwick station, and sure enough, bang on time the rail replacement bus arrived and I got on, along with a load other other people. Bus set off. About 10 minutes late the bus arrives at Warwick parkway station. Alerted by knowing this lies on the wrong end of Warwick for travel to Bicester I finally got around to asking the driver 'Where is this bs going?' to which I got the reply 'Birmingham'. I felt a fool! I'd gotten on the bus going the wrong way! Fortunately at that moment a bus pulled up behind us that was going the other way, so I quickly transferred buses. Feeling like a total prat as I did so. But then I looked back at the bus I was on, and found that virtually everyone else on the bus was also swapping buses! They had all gotten on the wrong bus too!! That made me feel a whole lot better. If I hadn't asked that question the whole busload of fools would have ended up in Birmingham!! *giggle*