A field trip to Stratford-upon-Avon

The children have been learning about Shakespeare, and so we took a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to watch a young people's version of Hamlet, and for a historic trip around his town of birth. We managed to leave the house before 7am since we did not want to hit any M25 traffic.
A lot of the local restaurants, shops and pubs use Shakespearean names. This one is named after the character Falstaff who appears in 3 Shakespeare plays.

Our play was at 10:15, and we arrived an hour early, so we headed over to the theatre to have a look around before the play.
I love this one of Jude's arms behind his back.
We were not allowed to take photo's inside the theatre, but I managed to snap this one with my phone. It really looks a lot like the pictures we have seen of the original Globe Theatre. There were a lot of school kids there, and so we felt like we could relax a bit with having all the children with us. Ayla was the noisiest wanting to make lots of sounds, but the rest even down to Ciara watched the play avidly. Jude loved the ending which is a sword fight in which nearly everyone dies.
There was a shop outside and Ciara and Jude both got swords, and Niamh bought herself a mask like the masks from the ball in "Romeo and Juliet". I do wish now that I had bought a few of the books of the plays in original english for us to read together. I will have to look out for them on our trip to the Globe Theatre in London.
After the play we did some sightseeing around the town.
Jude still full of the sword fighting standing in front of Shakepeare's school.

A different view of the school.
A lot of the town is left as it was in Tudor times.
We then went on to the church where Shakespeare is buried.
Mike and I both thought this made it sound like his grave was open.
His grave inside the church, with a short poem as the headstone.
We then took a walk along the river Avon. We had left too early for me to pack a picnic lunch so we stopped of at an Italian restaurant for lunch.
And then an ice cream before we headed home. There were a few places to sightsee that would require us to get back in the car and drive, but by this time we were thinking of the journey back and so we decided that we would have to come back to see the rest. Stratford is near the beautiful Cotswalds so this would make an ideal holiday spot.