Stratford-upon-Avon

At Anne Hathaway's Cottage. There we viewed both the "Courting Bench" and the "Courting Chair," mythic sites of the Bard's courtship of the elder Anne.  We don't know much about their courtship, but we do know that they married in haste because of Anne's pregnancy.  No evidence that they repented in leisure.

At Mary Arden's Farm (where Shakespeare spent some happy times with his mother's family) observing the hoof cleaning of Ellie, a "Gypsy Cob."  Neither of these Elizabethan farm workers were very good with horses.  It took them forever to get Ellie to lift her hoof.

Delys and some students talking falconry with the resident falconer at Mary Arden's farm.  Later, during his presentation, Delys got to put on the gauntlet and call a barn owl to her hand.  Unfortunately, we didn't get a good photo of it.

Paying my respects at Shakespeare's grave in Trinity Church.  It's the high point of our pilgrimage to Shakespeare's birthplace. His wife, Anne, is buried next to him.  Whatever separation they experienced during his career in London, they ended up together in the end.

However, perhaps the true high point of any pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon is visiting the Royal Shakespeare Company theatres to see a Shakespeare play performed.  This year, we saw Julius Caesar and Richard III.  Here Delys is enjoying some lunch from the Baguette Barge (ham and brie) in the park fronting the theatres on the Avon before attending one such performance.

Here are my Birkenstock-shod feet "treading the boards" of the old stage at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre before the theatre renovation, a stage where all the greatest actors in the UK once played, including Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier among many others. 

  

On our way back to London we stopped at the Cotswolds for a taste of the most pristine and picturesque part of England, unspoiled by the Industrial Revolution and kept vibrant (and solvent) by tourism.

We also stopped at Oxford for a visit to one of Delys's favorite places, the Bodleian Library, before finally driving those last 30 miles to London. 

We'll Always Have Paris

Even the Honorable William F. Cody took the occasion to visit Paris and the iconic Tour d'Eiffel.  Here I am with a facsimile of Buffalo Bill himself at the top of the tower. We westerners should stick together.

Here's the night view of the Tour d'Eiffel from the window of our hotel room at Hotel Kensington. Another example of why Paris is called the City of Light.

Palais Garnier (Paris Opera House of Phantom of the Opera fame) is yet another interior example of Paris's enlightened reputation.  No phantom in sight, although Andrew Lloyd Weber keeps trying to resurrect him to see how much more money he can make from the troubled, disfigured organist.

The entrance to Versailles, presided over by a statue of a mounted Louis XIV, the Sun King, the greatest of all the French monarchs, who famously declared, "L'etat, c'est moi" as well as the prophetic, "Apres moi, le deluge."

A propros of the flood, here's Delys on the Seine, with Notre Dame behind her, on a brisk and cloudy afternoon after a taste of gelato on the Isle St. Louis.

And here I am, in the same location on the Seine, contemplating the joys of the City of Light this year with those of the Eternal City, Rome, last year. It is a weighty subject of comparison.  I must say that in the end I much prefer Paris, although Rome had one thing last year that Paris lacked this year:  Travis and Heidi!  Rome with them may even eclipse the realm of the Sun King.