Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

(no, because it is always raining)

We took a coach tour to Warwick Castle, which was built in the 1200s. Warwick (pronounced War-ick) Castle is a cool attraction because it has both real people dressed in period costumes and wax representations of people who lived in the castle. Exterior shots from the Harry Potter movies were shot at the castle. While we were there, we got to see a demonstration of a trebuchet being loaded and fired. The stone was loaded in the same manner that they did it back in the day. There were people who walked these huge wheels that weighed several tons each. These wheels tightened the ropes and pulleys that held the stone in place until it was fired. When it was fired, it have a loud noise or anything. To me, the stone didn't seem to go very far, but they said it went about 200+ yards away. We didn't have very much time to spend at the castle which was a bummer because I could've spent much longer there.

From there, we went to Stratford upon Avon, which is where William Shakespeare was born. Stratford is a very charming and quaint little village. Once again, we didn't have very much time here, but we got to take a tour of Shakespeare's birthplace. The house he was born in was owned by his father who was a well off merchant; his father later gave it to William in his will. William wrote a total of 39 plays and hundreds of sonnets (or poems as we Americans call them). I didn't know this, but all of Shakespeares plays were published all at once by a couple of friends of William's - he didn't even want to publish them!

We also went to Oxford University which is actually made up of 39 colleges, each college having a speciality field. Several English prime ministers have gone to Oxford and several other famous people whom I can't remember! Oh, I do remember that Michael Palin from Monty Python fame graduated from here! Oxford's Christ Church college is where they filmed the Great Hall scene in Harry Potter. I've only seen a few of the HP movies, and even I recognized this from the movie! It was absolutely beautiful! Christ Church is the largest college of the university, but isn't saying a lot because it only has 500 students. There are a total of about 12,000 full-time students in the entire university. I found out that the university is government run, so it only takes about 3000 pounds per year to go there!!! WOW! Jude wants to move here so she can go to college on the cheap!