Tuesday 16 June 09 (a day of normal length)

By now fully acclimated to the time change (?) breakfast was handled with ease. Your travellers were introduced to the wonders of the cooked English breakfast (although only two have dared the baked beans for breakfast thus far!)

Matt's major complaint was that the birds here are much more annoying than those at home - especially since they begin singing when the sky brightens, somewhere around 4AM.

Once breakfast was done and cleaned up, our lunches were laid out and grabbed, and our coach awaited - perfect timing once again. Clearly nothing can go wrong on this trip (apart from hail storms on the wrong side of the river). Another difference we've noted is that drives that seem normal to us, seem quite long to our English friends. "This will be up to an hour and a half - do we need to schedule a break along the way?" We thanked Simon (our driver) and politely declined.

Nicely, Simon was able to drop us right across from the New Room and in we went to be greeted by Charles Wesley, in all his bronze glory. A sign at the door told us that Tibetan monks would be making butter sculptures and sand mandalas there in the chapel. Bonus.

The director of the New Room gave us a great tour of the chapel, the museum, and then across to Charles Wesley's house. It even seemed as though everyone was interested, paying attention, and having a good time. And well they might - it was excellent.

After the tour, we took time to eat our lunches, stop in a few shops, and buy some football jerseys (oh, you Yanks call it soccer, don't you?).

Simon picked us up right where he had dropped us, and off we went back to Stratford (or "home" as we like to call it for now).

On the way back, we even saw the summer home of the driver we had last time we were here (inside joke alert for any HT04 members who might be reading here). At any rate, the weather was beautiful all the way, all day. Perhaps this would be a better night for a trip across the river...?

Dinner was again great. This time it was shepherd's pie and sweet corn. For sweets there was a kind of banana cream pie that had been made by one of Kate's friends - everything was excellent, and not nearly as much went back on plates as had gone the night before.

This time, Judy, Heidi, and Charlie braved the far bank - and made it back completely dry! In fact, we found not only the church where Shakespeare is buried, but directly across the lane, we found the Straford Methodist Church (they're in the middle of a building project, so Judy doesn't want the appointment, thank you very much). They had a lovely (huge) rosemary bush outside the entrance - it was quite a stress reliever, in fact. Quite ironic.

All that walking was accompanied by someone trying to learn how to play the carillon in the church tower, not terribly successfully, but quite persistently - it went on for hours.

Charlie had a bit of a hankering for some caffeine, so he strode off to the Shell station down the road. Some of the girls saw him going, so when he came back they asked where they could get some snacks and such.
Rather than risking the roundabout again, they headed for good old Sainsbury's down by the river. Imagine the joy at finding that everyone else we knew was already there, also buying snackage.

Oh, by the way, just before all that snack seeking, I had made it to the internet café to update this blog. Sadly, they're only open until 6PM (that's 1PM your time, folks), so the update had to wait. Sorry about that, but now we know.

Before everyone retired, a package of beautiful pink earplugs was opened, and the birds would have to sing much more fiercely to do their worst to us come Wednesday morning!


That's about it for Tuesday. Wednesday will have to wait, as they're about to kick us out of the café - it's closing time. We don't have to go home, but we can't stay here, apparently.

Check back tomorrow - we'll try to have an update then.