Day 2: Shakespeare in Love (7/25/2016)

We landed in England this morning at 6am! YAY! An even bigger YAY is we were the first flight to land at Heathrow so we had ZERO wait at customs.

Our group (parents and players) with our tour director, John.

After a bit of a wait for one of the boy's dad who was flying in from Indonesia, we started our route to Cheshire.

This (motion) photo does not do the English Countryside justice. Simply gorgeous.

First off - let me say how fantastic our tour director is...He is FANTASTIC! This team has had him in the past and I can see why parents and kids alike love this guy. John is a Scotsman who lives in England. He has such an incredible amount of knowledge that the smallest things are so interesting to hear from him.

...Like the fact there is a bird of pray called a Red Kite that is near extinction. A group bred the bird and released 40 in to an area we passed through to help build the numbers back up. We ended up seeing one flying around a group of trees.

...Or like the fact that while Shakespeare's dad was a glove maker, he was also quite the deviant. He made a lot of money underhand by elicit trading of wool.

We visited Cottswold (hope I spelled that correct). We drove through Woodstock. These towns along the English countryside are beautiful. I love seeing everyone walking everywhere, the architecture, everything.

We learned that the Americans stole the term "Sheriff" from the English. The term comes from two English words put together. The word "shire" means a county (in American terms) while the word "reeve" (I'm pretty sure I'm butchering the spelling) refers to a person who is in charge of an area. "Shire" "reeve" = "sheriff"

We had a few hours to explore the beautiful town of Stratford-upon-Avon which is Shakespeare's birth place. We had lunch at the oldest pub in Stratford called The Garrick Inn. Rob had a meat pie (he asked the server to pick for him) and I had the English equivalent of a baked potato.

 

 

The birthplace of Shakespeare

I really wish we would have had more time to explore this wonderful little town and all the fascinating aspects of it. Hopefully we can "next time."

We arrived at our hotel (Cranage Hall) around 5pm. The boys immediately got changed and reported to the soccer field (aka football pitch) to have some training before dinner. It started pouring on them, but they seemed to have a lot of fun and the activity brought them out of their zombie-like zones they were in from little sleep and exhaustion.

If you look really carefully over the trees, you'll see a rainbow!

More tomorrow. For now, I'm off to bed after 36+ hours traveling with little sleep!

If you would like to see more photos from our first day in England, check out the full photo album HERE.