Stratford-upon-Avon treats

Today has been a busy day, and I don't have enough time to write a comprehensive post about our activities on the 10th of August. To fill in I'll write about the treats I purchased from the Stratford Sweet Shop:

From left to right: treacle toffee, Toxic Wastes, milk chocolate-covered nougat, and a giant gobstopper (jawbreaker). The toffee, nougat, and gobstopper are all self-explanatory, but Toxic Wastes are a hard and sour candy; one of my cousins introduced me to them and expected me to pull all sorts of faces from their sheer sourness, but I turned out to be fairly resilient to the candies (I could still taste how sour they were, but they didn't have much of an effect on me).

This is the gobstopper again, positioned on one of our plates and taken just before I started to eat it. It is completely solid and a very hard piece of candy; it can only be eaten through continued licking until it is small enough to place on the mouth and suck. Since this was shot two nights ago the gobstopper has lost little of its mass, but I have been able to lick all the colours off; it's going to take quite a bit of time to consume it entirely!

More about the brain, finances, lasers, and bowling...and also the piano

Going back briefly for this post, in the late evening of August 6th, the day we returned to Stratford-upon-Avon, the boyfriend of one of my cousins arrived at my grandparents' house. He had been invited to come up and join my cousin/his girlfriend in visiting my family; neither my brother nor I had a problem with this because it meant meeting a new person.

Now onto the 7th of August. This day was different from every other day in the week because the morning consisted of a lesson covering some aspects of the brain (a few months ago my grandfather provided several members of the family with a DVD course on improving memory and keeping the brain healthy), followed by a lesson and debate over finances. To sum up both topics, the main point of the first lesson was about keeping our brains exercised and not letting them degrade through inactivity, while the second was about the lack of knowledge numerous people have about money - from banks to renting or buying a house. I thought we all had a very worthwhile morning.

Our afternoon activities were also indoor events, as the sudden rain disrupted the schedule. Instead of visiting a place called Wollaton Hall we went to the tenpin bowling/entertainment facility from last year's trip. The first game we played there was a laser tag shootout, with me and my brother appointed by our uncle as the captains of our respective teams; it became up to us to choose the rest of our teams from our group, and with five members out of nine my brother's team ended up with a numerical advantage. Worse yet for my team, my uncle's laser didn't work (although he only became aware of that in the second game), rendering him nothing more than a target and making the game five versus three. Needless to say, my team was defeated twice - narrowly on the first game and handily on the second - with the majority of our hits against our opponents coming from my cousin's boyfriend being on my side, as he turned out to be the best player overall by a wide margin. At the end of the day it didn't really matter who won: it was all good fun and there were plenty of laughs all around, and that is what's most important.

The running and laughing from the laser games had made us hot and sweaty, so we had a rest and some drinks before heading off to the bowling alleys. Most of us were running fairly even in our scores during the bowling, although my brother, aunt, uncle, and cousin's boyfriend were all the best; my aunt beat my uncle by one point in the first round and then defeated my brother by four in the second - as she was on my brother's team during the laser games she was the only person to win in both events. I did not pass one hundred points in either of the two rounds of bowling, and much to my chagrin I caused a foul by throwing my ball too early on one go and it hit the barrier; worse yet, the ball had stopped, and when I rolled the ball on my subsequent both balls went into the gutter and ended up jamming the barrier. Fortunately, someone quickly remedied the problem, and as with the laser games it was all fun.

We had pizza for dinner when we went to my aunt and uncle's house later on in the day. After the meal my brother, cousins, and my cousin's boyfriend all went to watch a film while my aunt gave me a lesson on learning to play to piano. She told me that within three-quarters of an hour I had learnt more on how to play than she did in five lessons! By the end of the lesson I knew middle D, middle C, and middle B, and I do have an interest in learning how to completely play the piano, although I'm not sure how feasible that is at the moment. I'll have to see what happens.

When the film was finished we returned to my grandparents' house; we were exhausted, but there was a positive atmosphere and we eagerly awaited the next day.

Images from the Stratford-upon-Avon visit, 2012

On the 6th of August my brother, aunt and uncle from Nottingham, two cousins from Nottingham, two cousins from the East of England, and I all travelled to Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire. Initially, we were worried that this new trip to the town would be marred by rain, but fortunately the weather ameliorated over the course of the day and we had a marvellous time.

As with last year, the first location we went to in Stratford-upon-Avon was the leisure centre, where we had a small meal before venturing out towards the river. At this point we were concerned about the weather so the decision was made to go on a boat ride first and save any indoor activities for later. Coincidentally, the boat and navigator we had during our previous visit were the same for this ride.

A random shot containing the front segment of our boat in the foreground, the Royal Shakespeare Company on the left, the Avon in the centre, and the dock from where our boat was launched in the back. While the overall length of the ride was around half an hour, the route was changed somewhat, possibly owing to the higher water level compared to last: we did not travel as far as the Colin P. Witter Lock, although when going in the opposite direction we did go past some houses and a car park, both of which we didn't see last time.

Easily the most surprising object I observed when on the boat ride was this flag of the Confederate States of America. Seeing the occasional Star and Stripes isn't unusual here in the United Kingdom, but a Confederate flag is bizarre, especially in Stratford-upon-Avon! This is, at a minimum, the second Confederate flag I have seen in this country.

Almost as odd as the Confederate flag were these "Manga Shakespeare" books inside the Royal Shakespeare Company's gift shop. I have no idea if Shakespeare in comic book form has any effect in attracting unlikely readers of his works, but it's certainly an imaginative approach! (I should note, however, that I have observed something similar to this idea before: there is an episode of the science fiction/comedy television show Red Dwarf where one of main characters is reading the "comic book version" of the Greeks versus the Trojans.)

Among the 350+ pictures I took during our visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, the ones I consider my best are those of the observation tower of the Royal Shakespeare Company obstructing the Sun. The camera was mostly still, allowing the tower to be as straight as possible in this picture; and the Sun being blocked while its light shone from behind gave deeper hue to the sky and the clouds. Perhaps the only part of the image that spoils it a little is a segment of the non-tower area of the RSC shown in the bottom-left, but as it is not possible to take a picture of a tower (at least for this angle with the Sun at that point in the sky) without at least some portion of the rest of the building in, one can't complain too much about an otherwise perfect capture.

Remember the "Milkshake Lady" from Stratford-upon-Avon Moo-Moo's? Sadly, she wasn't anywhere to be seen this time, but I did get this shot of the milkshake bar itself. We were down Henley Street at this point and were visiting a few of the stores (such as the Stratford Sweet Shop); one of my cousins and I went into a "souvenir shop" expecting to find items to do with Stratford-upon-Avon, but we left after less than five minutes when we noted that all the products were London-oriented.

This is Quickly's, where we had our lunch; I had a delicious ham, egg, and chip main meal with a chocolate cheesecake for dessert.

After Quickly's we left Henley Street and walked to the Stratford-upon-Avon Butterfly Farm. We noticed the above statue on one of the arches, and those of us who had visited last year agreed that she was a new addition to the farm's front garden. So far I haven't been able to find out what her significance or name is.

My aunt, uncle, one of my cousins, and I decided to forgo entering the butterfly enclosure, citing the now-beautiful weather outside and the heat of the building's interior as our reasons.

Once those who had entered the butterfly farm had finished, we slowly made our way back to the leisure centre. On the way we noticed a machine generating bubbles like these ones; getting a decent shot of the bubbles was immensely difficult given their speed and distance from me.

A closing shot of the Stratford Leisure & Visitor Centre just prior to our departure. We had a lovely day in Stratford-upon-Avon, equalling the fantastic time we had there last year; the town is one of the best and most beautiful places I've visited so far in the United Kingdom, and providing it's a decent day I will always be delighted to go there.

Picture sorting after a holiday

It happens every time: you go on a week-long or more holiday, you have a superb time, you take hundreds of pictures to help preserve the wonderful memories, and then you go home. Once the fun is over and you've settled in back home, you now have countless images to rename and organise into the appropriate folders on your computer; you also have to fulfil, in a timely manner, any promises you made to your relatives to provide them with copies. If you're a blogger, there's also the matter of satisfying your followers.

I've been back for a little over a day from our Nottingham trip and I have successfully renamed and organised all of the 1000+ pictures I took on the holiday. I sorted out around a tenth of them last night, and today I spent a combined total of under two hours dealing with the rest. To be fair, I did have an advantage as I had visited Stratford-upon-Avon and Chatsworth House last year and had existing references to go from for them in renaming a portion of the new images, but even for those two parts of the journey there was a plethora of pictures that needed original names.

We are lucky that in today's world we have digital cameras: just fifteen years ago most people were not able to take 1000 images on a trip...and if they did they would have had to carry an extraordinary amount of film, which would have been expensive to then have developed. It may be a lengthy process having to sort through hundreds of pictures on the computer, but it's infinitely more preferable than having to fork out huge sums of money to have someone develop the film.

Now that I've renamed and organised the images of the recent trip and have them available for my relatives, the final step is now to satisfy my blog readers.

Stratford-upon-Avon visit, 2012

Last year we visited the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, and today we visited the town again. Our time in Stratford-upon-Avon this year was as amazing as it was last year, and I have plenty of pictures to post of the day next week. For now, I only have the time to post about where we have been!

Sweet things

Yesterday I finished the last of the candies I bought on the Nottingham trip. Believe it or not, I did take pictures of them...more for a bit of fun than anything else. Here they are:

My uncle bought this lollipop at the Nottingham Riverside Festival. To my knowledge, I had never eaten a wheel-lollipop (not even a small one like this) until I consumed this one. It was very sweet, as one would expect from lollipops, but had a nice sugary taste to it, and I brushed my teeth right after eating it.

Here is the lollipop again, with a bag of jelly babies, a nougat bar, and another lollipop: I bought those three candies from the Stratford Sweet Shop in Stratford-upon-Avon. The lollipop I bought was similar to the one my uncle bought, but it was a little more fruity; the jelly babies came in flavours such as orange, lemon, and blackcurrant (at least it tasted like that); and the nougat was tutti-frutti flavoured. All of these were delicious, and I am glad I had tried them.

This is a happy-faced chocolate lollipop from Hotel Chocolat. I had one of these last year, and wanted to buy another one: Although it looks like a simple chocolate lollipop with a smiley face, the chocolate used to make these is among the tastiest chocolate I have ever had. If you ever visit Hotel Chocolat in Nottingham, I definitely recommend trying one of these.

I prefer not to eat a lot of candies, but the occasional sweet things like these are okay. I did not buy any souvenirs like mugs or magnets on our trip, but the beauty with food is that you can share it with others!

Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station

On the way back from Stratford-upon-Avon, I took this picture of Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station:

I did it in my uncle's car while it was in motion and I had my camera on zoom. This was considered a brilliant image to family members I showed it to, and I am pretty impressed with it as well: it has a good contrast between the power plant with the vehicles and landscape, it is perfectly straight, and the light was just right. A power station is probably visually unappealing to most people, but I think my picture made this one look decent.

Last comments on the Nottingham trip

So, the last seventeen posts on my blog have been about our trip to Nottingham, but I think there is room for one more, with some final thoughts on the matter. First off, even though I did this in person, I wish to thank my aunt, uncle, and cousins on my blog for everything they did for us that week, from the new places they took us to visit to things we had experienced before and wanted to do again: it was all grand, so thank you. I also wish to thank for grandparents here for letting them stay with us for the duration of the trip.

What, you may ask, was my favourite part of our time there? Was it the maze at Chatsworth House, visiting Shakespeare's Birthplace, going to the cinema twice in two days, or perhaps even the Haunted House ride at Drayton Manor? (Okay, maybe not that last one.) An easy answer would be to say that everything that we did was equally good, and to be honest, that is the case for the most part, but to me, the part that stands out the most was spending time with family as well as gaining two new friends, and just having a great time with them.

While Stratford-upon-Avon was (in my opinion) the best place we visited with everything that day being perfect, to me, getting a chance to spend time with family in a way we had not been able to do so before means even more. When we lived in the United States, it was not easy for family other than my grandparents to visit (even that was only a few times), and other than a couple of business-related trips that took Dad to the United Kingdom, it was not easy for us to visit family in turn. It was a delight to spend more than a week with them, and I know the feeling was reciprocated. To add to this, it was also great to call two more people our friends before the trip ended.

The Nottingham trip was a brilliant experience for all involved. We all have fond memories of everything that happened, plus hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of what we did together.

Finally, I shall conclude this post with another picture of the rainbow that began our trip to Nottingham:

Stratford-upon-Avon images

On the 9th of August, everyone who went to Chatsworth House on the 8th, plus an older cousin of mine all went to Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, the home of William Shakespeare. Here are a few of the pictures I took, plus some thoughts about the events of that day:

This was one of the first pictures I took when we got to Stratford-upon-Avon. I always find the skylines and architecture of a place fascinating, and Stratford-upon-Avon was no exception, starting with this spire. In fact, on the way there I also got a glimpse of the skylines in Leicester and Coventry, but it was nice to look at Stratford's landscape from the ground rather than in the car. I think the spire in the picture is from the Church of the Holy Trinity building.

The first place we walked to in Stratford, after we had some lunch at the leisure centre, was the Stratford-upon-Avon Butterfly Farm. The butterfly farm, as its name implies, houses butterflies, possibly hundreds of them. They have an enclosure reminiscent of a rainforest for them to fly around in, and although the butterflies will often land on people, you are not supposed to pick them up yourself, as butterflies are delicate, any touching of their wings will easily harm them. I have never seen so many butterflies, both in types and number, all at once before.

The butterfly farm also houses a few other animals, including reptiles, insects, and arachnids, such as the one in the picture above. This is a tarantula, though I cannot remember what type it was called. Despite its size and how fearsome it looks, I found the Black Widow in a nearby glass enclosure to be far more disturbing.

The butterfly farm was certainly a good experience, but after seeing all the exhibits, I was glad to get out. It was not because I had become bored of the place or anything like that, rather, I found the heat and humidity, both of which are necessary for the well-being of the animals housed in the farm, to be overwhelming after more than half an hour in there. My biggest regret, however, was not being able to take more pictures as my camera had fogged up from the steam emanating from the ponds. Still, if I had the chance to go again I would do so.

The next part to the adventure was a motorised boat ride on the Avon itself. The ride lasted for about half an hour, and consisted of travelling to one end then to the other of a small designated part of the Avon for boats. I took this picture of a bridge from the boat.

This is the Colin P. Witter Lock. I thought was an interesting structure, so I decided to take a picture of it: I liked the contrast of the lock with the water in the front and the greenery behind and to the sides. I wish the image was a little less slanted, though,

While these two boats are stationary, it was good to pass other boats on the river. Unlike the rafting trip from years ago, there were no water fights going on here!

The Church of the Holy Trinity is the name of this beautiful building. I am glad the boat was going at a reasonable speed so I could get a decent picture of it this close.

This has to be one of my favourite pictures from the Stratford-upon-Avon trip, as it to me is a "perfect picture": the colouring is superb and everything looks good, from the trees on the left, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in the middle, the town and boat in the distance, the sky above, and the water in front (especially the ripple from the boat in the bottom right-hand corner). In all, I am exceptionally pleased with this image.

I took this just before the boat ride ended. I am fortunate to have a camera with a strong zoom feature: this is the tower from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and was taken from quite a distance on maximum zoom.

After the boat ride, we made our way towards a part of Stratford-upon-Avon titled "Henley Street". Henley Street is name of the town's high street and main pedestrianised road, as well was a major shopping and tourist area. As we were moving and wanting to get past traffic, this was the best picture I could take of the Costa Coffee building and the architecture from this side of Henley Street. I remember seeing that building and others in its style in pictures and was glad to see them for myself in person.

Speaking if seeing things in person, the best part about Henley Street is this building: Shakespeare's Birthplace. This building is the place where William Shakespeare was born and spent the early part of his life at. Unfortunately, people are not allowed to take photographs or videos inside the house, but an outside shot is still impressive enough. I will admit that I had a "wow, I am really here" moment when I stepped inside the house, as I could not believe I was standing inside the house where one of the world's most famous and respected people had once lived.

The thing I found most interesting about the house was how large and spacious it was: someone inside said that it had a few unnecessary inside walls and more small rooms by today's standards, but I thought that the house was actually better than today's houses in some ways: it was larger than all houses I have been to so far since living over here again (even our current house is smaller); and if you added modern utilities to it or removed them from current homes, it would be a very comfortable house with plenty of space. Of course, the historical significance of Shakespeare's Birthplace and maintaining the building and its grounds is far more important than comparing it to modern houses, but even so, I thought it held up reasonably well.

This is a picture of Shakespeare's Birthplace from the back. In the group are two performers acting out a scene from one of Shakespeare's numerous plays.

Here are the two performers mentioned in my commentary for the picture above this one, and they are acting. One of my cousins and our friend had their picture taken with the lady in my photo above (done by my brother); I wish I could put it up, but I have a rule to avoid putting up images that contain family members or friends.

Once we had finished at Shakespeare's Birthplace, we went back out onto Henley Street. We then went to a pretty little restaurant that served "cream tea": when my uncle mentioned that we should try cream tea that afternoon, I assumed he meant tea with cream in, and since I drink coffee, plus a couple of other people in our group were coffee-drinkers, I was not sure what all the excitement over cream tea was. It turned out it was actually a meal consisting of a selection of sandwiches and cakes, not just tea with cream in it, and it was very nice. I should also note that I was the only one who drank coffee at tea time.

It was the early evening at the time we met the Milkshake Lady, and we had an hour and a half's trip back to Nottingham, so we left Henley Street and made our way back to the cars. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am a fan of sunny days with "friendly" clouds, so I took a picture of the sky: it was like this the for a majority of the day.

Finally, this picture was the second-from-last image I took in Stratford-upon-Avon (the last was not as good in quality as this), and it was taken from inside my uncle's car, hence why it looks a little like it was taken through a window. We went straight back to my grandparents' house that evening, and we had fruit for dinner as we were still full from cream tea.

To me, this day was what I call a "perfect day": nearly everything about it went smoothly, and anything that could have been considered "dull" normally (such as having to wait a couple of times in queues or for the boat ride to have enough passengers) were still somehow exciting. Plus, everyone was cheerful, and the weather was brilliant: Stratford-upon-Avon is definitely a place I would go to again.

Stratford-upon-Avon

All of us from yesterday, plus my oldest cousin all went to Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire...the birthplace of William Shakespeare! We took a boat ride on the river, walked along the main street of the town, went to afternoon tea, and visited the home that Shakespeare himself was born in! Today has been as wonderful as yesterday, and I am definitely looking forward to posting pictures of this day up!