Oft expectation fails, and most oft there.

We had another bank holiday weekend (meaning Monday was a holiday), so Hank, our friend Matt from work and I set off for Shakespeare-land: Stratford-Upon-Avon. (My favorite quote of the day, not to tease Matt too much, was, "So, anyone know what river this is?")

We managed to find a couple of plays that the Royal Shakespeare Company was putting on... there were a couple of requests for "The Seagull" by Checkov (no, not the engineer), and as a bonus: Sir Ian McKellen was in it! So, we doth booked our tickets and doth boarded our 2.5 hour train ride out of London early Saturday morn.

Stratford-Upon-Avon was definitely a different city than I think I'd expected. I didn't read up a lot in the guidebooks before going - mostly we just wanted to wander as we'd done before. But there were very few of the typically Shakespearian-style homes (one of which sat on top of what's now a Pizza Hut... shudder), mostly "high-street" (chain) shops, and everything closed promptly at 5pm. I guess I was expecting something a bit more like Hank and I had found in Canterbury where there were nice lanes to wander down, some independent shops, and perhaps something resembling life after twilight.

The play itself got mixed reviews from the three of us - Matt was the most positive, I was the least positive, and Hank stuck to middle ground. I thought the acting was marvelous - were they acting something I could get interested in, I'm sure it would have been a fabulous experience! The story just never grabbed hold of me.

The rest of the weekend we didn't do much, mainly relaxed. I got a bunch of knitting done - I'm so excited to be working on a project (a sweater, even!) for myself, after finally getting out of the "I owe someone a late xmas/bday/bribe-payment present" cycle. The weather up until this past week had been perfect and lovely, but this weekend the rain and solid gray skies set in firmly. We had a hard time getting motivated to actually want to go outside in it all. Personally I blame Taka & Neko for making napping on the couch all day look like such a tempting option.