Day 4

Tuesday July 31

9:05am BST (thanks for the correction Jo ;)) - we were woken up by the alarm at 8:15 for our 8:30 breakfast… Whoops! LOL. Breakfast was "smaller" today in that there were less eggs so we finished, but I am still just as stuffed.

10:30am BST - After breakfast we went down to the River Avon again and took some pictures of the major Shakespeare statue and the four littler ones around it. Pretty nice, and it looked beautiful under the clear clean blue skies. Then we walked back up and stopped in some of the clothing stores having sales that day. But it was all either ugly or still expensive. Plus it's not like I have tons of room for clothes (actually I guess that's a good thing LOL)

11:00am BST - found Adam, and finally experienced riding in car driving on the other side of the road. Absolutely bizarre experience LOL!!!!! Somehow (thankfully with his GPS and the help of a nice man who came out when we turned into his driveway to turn around) made our way to the northernmost town in the area called the Cotswolds - a lovely little town named Chipping Campden. Once we finally found it, we parked and tried to find the town Center, which wasn't so hard since, yeah, it is pretty tiny. We went into the tourist information office and for 50p bought a local brochure. It had a walking tour where you could walk outside the town and see great views of the city. Well, we tried two of them and failed following the directions so we kinda just gave up (it would've helped to know what a "stile" is and even the British among us did not know… and it would've helped if more things would be labeled, not point in telling you to go through a gate with a particular name IF THE GATE IS NOT MARKED!!). Anyway, Chipping Campden is an old medieval wool town, there's kind of one main street with some shops and restaurants, some neat houses, a couple churches, and well, a whole lot of sheep. Very cute, never seen anything like it I suppose. It's kinda what Lynnfield would look like if it were from the medieval 1500s instead of Colonial America, I guess.

1:00pm BST - We walked up and down the main street, had some pasta for lunch in an italian restaurant in a 16th century or so building, which seemed really out of place, but it was quite tasty and quite frankly the "authentic" British places/pubs didn't look all that great. Today was Amanda's birthday so I bought her lunch. Tried to pay for Adam too since he spent the time and effort and expensive gas coming from London but he wouldn't let me. At least he can't complain then ;) So after lunch we were like, what do we do?! So we walked out to the main church a couple blocks out of town - St. James's - apparently one of the regions oldest and biggest "Wool churches" - not sure what that is but the church was beautiful. Earlier we had tried to find this "Dover's Hill" so we looked at the map in the guide I bought and then we drove up to the big hill. There was a parking area right at the entrance and oh man, the SHEEP. HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF LOUD BAAHHHHINNNNNNNGGGGGGG SHEEP!!! I've never heard or seen anything like it. They didn't even really flinch when people walked by. The views were freaking unbelievable (see pics) sheep that had vast views of the valleys below. Simply stunning. I played around with the camera and took some shots in a panoramic ratio, I don't know if they actually look any better, but they don't look worse so it was a little experiment I suppose. We walked around a bit - carefully avoiding the copious sheep shit, and started to head back to Stratford. Along the way, we encountered absolutely stunning views of the town below, so we stopped to snap a couple pictures. Then we just came back here and relaxed for a bit. Looked through my pictures and they came out stunning, the day was absolutely beautiful, perfect really. So we just chilled for about an hour before dinner.

6:00pm BST - going out to dinner. On the way to the fish and chips place, I saw this sign above a private garage that we had probably walked by 5 times but hadn't noticed before, and OH MAN HAHAHAHAHA (see pics ;))

6:30pm BST - Chicken and Chips mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Some of the best fries I've ever had let me tell you. See the pic. We took it across the street to the park on the Avon and just sat on a bench in the shade on an absolutely picture perfect evening and just ate there. It was great, just people watching, eating our cheap food, etc. Stopped at the ATM on the way back and I got a cone of yummy chocolate ice cream and that's about it for today! Check out the lovely pics and also look at the 3 videos I took in Chipping Campden all from Dover's Hill - of the sheep and some panoramic views.