Stratford, Warwick, and Bruno

Adam and I spent last weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon, which I was very excited about because I always loved my English Literature classes, and was about to be surrounded by all things Shakespeare. We had such a good time. The weather was perfect all weekend, and we stayed in a hotel that was originally an old Tudor-style home, so the walls were all crooked and lumpy... so charming.

We saw Shakespeare's birthplace and grave, and also Anne Hathaway's (not the actress) childhood home. The homes were so interesting to go through because they have so much of the original furniture, and the guides there are so informative on how they used all the furniture and just generally kept house, which I love learning about. For example, I learned where the word 'threshold' comes from! Don't worry, I won't bore you with that here. But feel free to ask any time if you like that kind of thing as much as me!

Shakespeare's home

Adam falling in the wildflowers

Anne Hathaway's cottage

Shakespeare's burial place

THE grave

We also spent a day in Warwick, a town right next to Stratford and home to Warwick Castle. We didn't really know much about the castle going into it, except that it is described as "the ultimate castle experience." So naturally Adam was very excited because he loves castles as much as I do old furniture and cooking utensils. As it turns out, Warwick really is how you imagine an old castle looking... and they have also turned it into a theme park! They had an archer shooting apples from far away, the world's largest trebuchet (basically a slingshot) which can shoot fireballs, a bunch of eagles and peacocks, wax figures in every room... and etc. So, when we walked in and realized we'd forgotten the kids that everyone else brought with them we thought, well okay, today we are the kids! We had fun getting into all the different attractions, plus the castle grounds are beautiful, and the weather was perfect, so we spent a lot of the day napping on the lawn. It was nice.

The archer

The world's biggest slingshot/trebuchet

He's such a trooper

After our wonderful weekend, the rest of the week was pretty lowkey with one exception: Bruno. One of the fun things about living in a big city is movie premiers. This is something that up until Wednesday, I'd not really taken advantage of. However on that day, I was out with my friend, Andrea, when her husband called to remind us that the "Bruno" premier was that evening. This is Sacha Baron Cohen's follow up character to Borat. For those readers of a different generation that don't know who that is, basically he is a comedian that creates these bizarre characters that develop a huge cult following, and lead to movies based on these characters where he makes the movie-watcher as uncomfortable as possible by performing wildly inappropriate (and admittedly often funny) acts in as little clothing as possible.

SO, back to the phone call... we all decided that this could be a really fun premier to go to if only for the production value, I mean this guy is always known to deliver. Plus, Andrea loves all thing celebrity as much, if not more, than I do, and seeing them live is always so much fun! So Andrea and I went to save places on the front of the red carpet, where we ended up standing for 3 straight hours with a group of EXCITED teenagers on one side, and a guy who'd never heard of deodorant on the other side. And after we'd been there for 10 minutes, a cold wind suddenly came through, which can only lead to one thing: rain. So we stood in the cold rain for 3 hours with the above mentioned people. Not really the glamour we'd expected. We also realized that this movie only has one character, so the red carpet wouldn't be full of a star-studded cast... just a bunch of famous Brits... none of which we really know.

After all that waiting, we did see his big entrance (not really as grand as we'd hoped for) and... wait for it... I touched his HAND! And we saw his adorable famous actress wife, but right before she got to where we were standing, she was just too cold and simply waved us and said bye. So sad.

Since we weren't planning on going to the premier, neither of us had a camera. So here's a picture I found on the internet. I hope it shows up on your computer because I don't really know what to do when it comes to stealing other people's photos.

The man we stood in the rain for

Also, if you're really bored right now, the teenagers next to us were interviewed, which made us the cool people in the background standing awkwardly because we're not sure if we're in the shot or not... http://entertainment.ie/Movie/feature/bruno:-UK-Premiere-Videos/2/293.htm. If you watch that video, we're behind the very first and very last group interviewed.

So that's all the updates for now! My parents are currently packing up to join us here in London, and we'll also visit Scotland with them! Which reminds me, I didn't get to blog about Adam's parents' visit before I went home for the wedding, so I'll make my next blog all about parental visitation!