Wow!!! We all got into Oxford, aren't you proud?

Another incredible day in the British Isles for our group!

We awoke from the Hand Hotel safe and relatively unscathed from the different spirits that reportedly haunt its hallways and bedrooms.  Some of the students truly believe that they experienced some paranormal activity, but I can say with all honesty that I don't think I did.

The drive from Wales to London is a pretty long one, so we decided to break it up with a few important stops along the way.  Our first destination is a little town of about 100,000 people.  The name of this town is Stratford apon Avon.  This is the land of William Shakespeare.  Wouldn't you know...today was the day they were celebrating Shakespeare's Birthday.  We were so fortunate.  The whole town was celebrating.  We not only toured Billy's house, but we also saw a parade in his honor.  Some of us may have even signed his birthday card and had some cake.  There were tons of people dressed in fancy clothing and costume.  Even a few of us recited some important lines from Shakespearean plays.  The weather was also great.

After touring Shakespeare's house, Mr. Bemis and I found ourselves in a little market and bought some rope candy.  We sat for a coffee and to people watch when I happened to notice that the cafe had muffin sandwiches.  I thought to myself, "Self, because that's what I call myself, you must have an English Muffin while in England."  So, I ordered an English Muffin sandwich.  It was great.  I'm not the type of person who typically photographs my meals, but I had to share this sandwich with the world.

It was scrummy...which I found out today was a good thing.

We gathered on our coach and took off a mile down the road to tour Anne Hathaway's house.  She is not the famous actress.  She was the wife of William Shakespeare.  The house was nice.  It also reminded me a little bit of some of the structures at the Iron Works.  Actually, it dawned on me that the whole Shakespearean era was about the same time as colonial settlement of Salem, and subsequently Saugus.  This made it all the more interesting.

After Anne's house, we had a bit of lunch and then began our trek to Oxford.  Along the way, Chris gave a wonderful summary of the life and history of the English Kings and Queens.  Our kids were very interested and some of them even passed his quiz when put to the test.  It is a good thing they did too, because we ended up at Oxford University and we all were accepted!!!  The photo at the top of this day's post was near the end of the tour.  I'm not particularly happy with the photo, but I had to run into the middle of a busy intersection to take it...so I'll get over it.

Oxford was really cool.  Because of the weather, and the fact that we visited on Saturday, the university was a buzz.  There were all sorts of costumed dancers performing strange dances with clubs.  There were also fire jugglers and knife throwers.  We visited the covered market and I scampered off for a quick bit to find the history faculty building.  It felt like home.

The tour of this city and university was great, but we were only there for about two hours before heading to London.

Because of everything in Boston, we've decided to change up our itinerary a bit.  The London Marathon is tomorrow, and while we are confident that the incident back home was isolated, we thought it best not to tour the sights along the marathon route.  We couldn't, however, visit London without seeing the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and everything in between.  So, after dinner at the biggest mall I've ever been too, we took off in the Tube to see these great sights.  Chris was great in explaining the Tube and which spots we needed to remember.  On this tour, my camera battery died, but I did get some great shots.  You can see all of my pictures from this tour here: https://sites.google.com/a/saugus.k12.ma.us/lavoietravel/photo-gallery

Tomorrow, we will be taking a bus tour, but we will be avoiding all of the sights along the marathon route.  We will be visiting some museums and a shopping district near Harrod's department store.

 Westminster Abbey

Buckingham Palace

Big Ben...my camera died after this shot, so I had not chance to take another one :(

This is me, 385 yards away from the London Marathon finish line.  You can take the kid out of Boston, but you can't take the Boston out of the Kid.  B-Strong Boston!!!  I'll see ya soon.