Castles Weekend!!

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, last weekend was our last group trip – Castles Weekend!!
This was the trip that was the determining factor between choosing this program and one other program so it was a pretty big deal for me.
Our destinations included: Conventry Cathedral, Warwick Castle, Stratford Upon Avon, Bath, Stonehenge, and Windsor Castle.
Although I had to wake up at 5:30am on a Friday morning, needless to say, I was absolutely ready for it.

Friday, as I just said, started pretty early…when it was still pretty dark outside.
We arrived at the Coventry Cathedral around 9am. This was a really neat cathedral and one that was different than all of the other ones I have seen in the past. It consisted of 2 buildings; one was the ruins of a cathedral built in the early 15th century, and the other was a new cathedral built around the 1950s.
The older one, was bombed during World War II and is the reason why it remains as ruins – to hold the memory in place.

Notice the row of benches in the picture, and if you take a closer look at one of them (which I can’t upload the picture of it for some reason :/) it says “Valparaiso University U.S.A. February 1964”. So Valpo must’ve donated to this Coventry Cathedral for its rebuilding! Isn’t that neat? It was great seeing a part of Valpo in England.

The light coming through from the glass windows were absolutely beautiful! Especially because the sun rays were at the perfect angle in the morning. It was great seeing two parts of history in one place.

But the next destination was something that I was really looking forward to: a castle!

Our first castle that we headed to was Warwick Castle. I had the impression that it was going to be just be a regular castle, so I was really surprised to see how touristy it was built to be.

This is the view from the walls that were surrounding the castle. Walking along the wall was very fun, although we climbed almost 600 steps to get to the top of it! The staircases and doorways throughout the walls were really small, and even I felt a bit confined going through it. It really shows how much smaller the people used to be several hundred years ago. Good thing that population started becoming taller throughout the years! …except I might that missed that boat.
Another thing that was really neat about this castle was that it had a “King’s making” attraction that showed what the King’s servants did behind the scenes. The wax figures looked very realistic, and they made me jump a couple of times. There was a wax horse that looked really real, and it’s tail moved all of a sudden which made me definitely startled. They were all really well made.

Servants making weapons.

We were also able to see a WHOLE bunch of peacocks, and I’ve never been so close to a peacock in my life!
They were really pretty, but much larger than I expected and were quite intimidating to be honest.
But while they were perched up on the benches and resting, they were a really nice sight.

After the Warwick Castle, we drove to Stratford Upon Avon, and went to see the house that William Shakespeare grew up in.
It was a nice, small house, but with lots of rooms. It was really amazing to be standing in the house of a historically famous person who lived there a few hundred years ago.
That same night we went to see a play at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The outside was different, but the inside looked almost exactly like the Globe Theatre in London. It was a great experience to be able to see both the Globe Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. A nice little deja vu!

The following morning, we headed to Bath to see the Roman Baths.
Now the Roman Baths has a LONG line of history. It was first found during the pre-Roman period and the water was thought to be able to heal. That tradition still exists today and visitors come to drink the water from the fountain.
Our group was able to drink some of that water. When we were first offered it by the tour guide, I was very excited. I had been pretty thirsty all morning so this was going to be a great thirst quencher, especially if it had the ability to heal and make me really healthy, right? Well I was wrong. It’s true that it’s healthy but the water was warm, first of all, so it wasn’t very pleasant to drink. It also tasted faintly like blood, which I found out later was because there’s some iron in the water.

The rest of the day was spent in Bath, and I loved the town! It was a very cute, typical English-looking town. I just can’t get over how adorable the towns are here.

Most of the town was already in Christmas season (as am I!) and the lights were so cute!
We also saw the Royal Crescent, and saw a beautiful sunset.

So that was Bath, and it was just splendid.

I realized that this post has gotten pretty long and I don’t want to bore you, so I will post a separate entry for Stonehenge and Windsor Castle. I have LOTS of stunning pictures from Stonehenge so stay tuned!

Cheers!