Ready? Ha! I was born ready!

We have returned to Holland! Sadly our trip to Ire/England has ended, but it’s not too sad because we still have one more day here in Holland! It is Tuesday now, so it has been 4 days since I’ve written. So much has happened in those four days it’s hard to know where to start. The Saturday we spent in England was one of the best days of our trip. I wrote about 6 pages front and back about that day in my journal so I’ll have try to give the abridged version here. We got up at 5:30 to get on the 6:15 train to Stratford. Blech, not a big fan of waking up that early. But when we got there, the town was just beginning to wake up so it was really neat to see that. Of course our first matter of business was Shakespeare’s birthplace. We were not dissappointed! It was sooo cute and quaint! It was rather weird to think that the great Shakepeare himself was born there! Nuts. We then walked around the village, hit a big garage sale they were having and then made our way to Warwick to see the infamous Warwick castle. Warwick castle was the funnest castle that we went to. It was also the biggest I believe, and the most touristy (which kind of sucked but in this case it was a lot of fun too). There were people all around the grounds that were in costume of the medieval time period (such as a knight -- he was soooo cute! He was australian and reminded me of Russell Crowe.. I got a picture with him. Awww what a cutie -- a keeper of the dungeon – who was also not too shabby of a guy -- a duke and duchess, and a jester). These people gave little demonstrations or entertained or gave history on the castle and the time period in which it would have been used (the title of this blog is from one of the demonstrations). The rooms in the castle were also all decorated in the time period décor and in some they had wax figures doing the trade things they would have done back then. Across a little river they had tents set up in a little “village” and there were real people there doing such things as sewing, calligraphy, cooking, etc. all in period costumes again. A lot of the demonstrations in the castle were geared towards more children, but it was still tons of fun and was a great way to relax for the morning (you know me, a child at heart.) Once done there, we made our way to Oxford … the city “of dreaming spires”. That saying is not a lie. Oxford is a beautiful city! I only hope that I can return some day as a student… Of course, Oxford is also the place where J.R.R. Tolkien lived (the author of the Hobbit and the infamous the Lord of the Rings) so I had made a Tolkien tour for us to do. :) We saw five out of his six houses, his church, his college, and the Eagle and Child!!!! (his pub) We were going to have supper in the pub, in the very room where the Inklings would have sat and talked about their books and what not, but the pub’s kitchen was closed for the evening. So we contented ourselves with just going inside and walking around the place. It wasn’t very big. I also got a picture in front of the building which I hope to put on this page when I get back to Canada. While we were infront of the building a guy from Turkey tried to “pick us up”, so that was kind of fun. He was going to school in London and so he really wanted to know how much longer we were going to be there… but we said we were leaving the next day. Too bad for him! He was in the picture too, but to the side, watching me pose. Kind of creepy but he was really nice so it was okay. And he wasn’t old!! Yippee! We then walked around the city… and lo and behold… I met my philosophy prof from Redeemer walking down a little street in Oxford!!! Holywell St.— where one of Tolkien’s houses was.. It was the craziest thing ever!!!!! He recognized me and we chatted for a little bit. Had we been a little bit later or earlier, we would have missed each other completely… all away across the world. Man, the world is small. We went back to our hostel where both Trish and I managed to get hit on again by another guy. This one was definitely desperate because he tried to pick me up with the line “nice glasses, where did you get them from?” I think that has got to be the LAMEST pick up line ever!!! Where do guys get these things??? He also told me that fifteen minutes with me would be heaven, but he would take one minute if he could.. and when I left him he said he was going to kill himself. I mean really.Our last day in London was spent touring the rest of the city. We saw Buckingham palace and the British museum (I saw the Rosetta stone, which I’m sure I’ll be proud of some day) and then went back to the Theatreland museum to go to the costume workshop. That was soooo worth it because Trish and I were the only ones there, so we got to try on what ever we wanted! I tried on a dress worn by Carlotta in Phantom of the Opera, an Elizibethan dress, and the skirt worn by Sandy in Grease! It was a blast! But the cost of such a fun thing was that we were late for leaving for the airport. Our plane left at 4:10 and we didn’t leave the TheatreLand building till1:30. We then had to take the underground to our hostel, run in and get our bags, take the underground to Hyde Park, stop for two seconds at Speaker’s Corner, run through Hyde park (yeah, that park is big and it was hot – around 30 degrees – and we had our big backpacks on.. man were we sweating and red faced!!!) catch the subway and arrived at the airport at 3:00… an hour before our flight. Luckily we made the plane but then our plane was delayed for 1 ½ hours. Lovely. But we made it to Amsterdam and now we have been here for two days. Since this blog is already pretty big I won’t really elaborate on what we have done, but Monday we went to Uterecht for the afternoon (did some shopping) and yesterday Amsterdam. We also went through the Red Light district in Amsterdam.. wow what an eye opener!! A rather depressing and revolting area of the city. But this also means I have seen every capital of every country I visited in Europe.. Each is soo different but all are beautiful and unique in their own way. Today we are relaxing – going to a town which has many secondhand shops (yeah second hand stuff!) and seeing a castle – because we are leaving early tomorrow morning. :( Truly truly sad… Anyways this is pretty long so I will write more later.. I will be home in 2 days!