Although we had library cards I still found the Bodleian rather intimidating so I forked over the dough to do the tour. Turns out I would not have had access to this part with my card anyhow. We got to hear a little history of the building and see the backroom where Charles I had ruled for a short time during the English Civil War. It was really neat and a lot of information.
I then trekked down to the Museum of Oxford. Not a bad little place, it chronicles Oxford’s rise from ‘the town near the ford’ through it’s academic history and even delved into it’s history as a car manufacturing hub. (Can you blame me for skipping that part?)
After lunch we headed out to Stratford-Upon-Avon passing the afternoon (what was left of it) in town and attending an evening performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Of course I broke off from the group almost immediately and wandered around snapping photos. It seemed like all the more churlish folks from our larger group had made it onto that bus and I admit that I actually hid from a couple of them when I wandered into the more touristy parts of town.
Shakespeare’s hometown is much like everywhere else – it all closes down between 4 and 5 p.m. and had a large old town which could also be translated as ‘tourist pen’ filled with shops totally irrelevant to the destination. Example: one of the oldest looking shops in Oxford on Cornmarket street sells cell phones. That kind of thing. It’s also under construction – the Shakespeare theater that is.
I wandered down by the river and back. I got a fish dinner which, aside from the vinegar and salt covering my ‘chips’ tasted remarkably like any American pre-processed and fried fish served with french fries. At least there was plenty of it.
The play was good. We were seated in the rafters, but the ‘curtain’ was actually a mirror so you could still see the action (albeit in reverse) if it wandered to the front of the stage. I’m not really a Shakespeare buff so I could not fully appreciate the whole thing. The play-within-a-play at the end was quite funny. They had a few clever plays on words some of which involved a guy running around in red undies. This caused a great deal of discussion back on the bus. Some folks found it ‘offensive’ to have a guy with red undies included in a classic play; I found it to break up the monotony. Personally I could have left our poor lovers stranded in the woods for a very – long – time.
