English Vacation (Day 14): Cotswolds and Shakespeare's home

This morning I woke up early so I could get the whole crew dressed and ready before Daisha's speedy family was ready. We packed our stuff and left, only to forget to do the last minute check to see if we forgot anything. And guess what, we forgot Hyrum's backpack of clothes (actually, it was Dakota's backpack with Hyrum's clothes and our toothbrushes). We left the hotel with no idea that the backpack was left behind. We headed off looking for breakfast, since this hotel didn't offer continental breakfast (stinkin' thing), and found Little Chef. Daisha described it as an overpriced, nasty Denny's, but she thought we needed the experience of going there and trying a "full English breakfast", so we did. I was brave and ordered the full English breakfast (they called it the Olympic breakfast), but the beans freaked Hyrum out, so he ordered the American breakfast, only to find it wasn't as good as a real American breakfast. I found this description of what I ate in an article, so I'll just use it to let you know what I was subjected to.
The current £7.25 “Olympic” breakfast at Little Chef comprises: “two rashers of crisp backbacon, British outdoor-reared pork sausage, two griddled eggs, whole-cup mushrooms, crispy sauté potatoes, fresh griddled tomato, Heinz baked beans and toasted or fried extra-thick bloomer bread”.
Um, backbacon isn't streaky bacon, as they call American bacon. It's like thick Canadian bacon, which is way better in my opinion. The sausage isn't your typical breakfast sausage...more like what some fancy folks put in their hot dog bun. The beans are pork and bean type. I hear that the potatoes aren't typical, and that the bread should be fried, but they brought me toasted. I managed to stomach it all (yes, even the beans...for breakfast!), but I couldn't stomach trying the tomato since tomatoes by themselves are vile little things that make me cringe at the thought of their seeds and slime and nasty taste. I found a picture of the Little Chef Olympic breakfast on the web, since I forgot to take a picture.


We left Little Chef unimpressed, and headed off to tour the Cotswolds. We drove through charming villages like Bibury. Notice how the streets are, so that if you park, you're taking up most of the lane. This is typical for almost all of the villages we drove through.


Bibury is famous for Arlington Row (a really old row of adorable, though skewompous, homes),


Burford, with surprisingly wide streets and decent parking,


and Stow-on-the-wold, where we stopped to walk around the town and put our heads in the stocks.


Look at this wall! They make them out of stones that are stacked just right so most walls don't even have mortar or anything holding them together.


We drove on toward Stratford-upon-Avon, but first stopped at Hidcote gardens, which turned out to be my favorite gardens of my whole trip. I adore the gardens in England!!!! Hyrum stayed in the car with Hyatt and Kiersa, since Kiersa was asleep, and watched a movie. He didn't feel like paying for extra people just to see another garden. Obviously the gardens aren't his favorite part.
The entrance had a genuine thatched roof, and the gardens were practically a maze of hedges, pools, flowers and paths. I was in heaven, though I was nearly having to run through it so it wouldn't take too long for Hyrum.

This is an English robin.

Tilly kept complaining during our vacation that her legs were about to fall off because they were too tired from walking. Can you tell we live in a location that requires driving places, unless it's within town?


We hurried through the gardens, though I could have spent days there, since none of the men were thrilled to have stopped there, and then we went on to Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, which is Ashland's grandparent home. Ashland (my home town) was designed a bit after Stratford-upon-Avon since Ashland is the home of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. Just look at this amazing architecture. It has so much personality!


We took pictures by the home Shakespeare was born in...


and Hyrum and I bought cheap sunglasses from a street vendor (5 pounds for 2).

We saw the Shakespeare theatre, but it was getting a facelift or something, so it looked pretty bad.


We toured the city and saw a funny notice...


and considered eating at a pub, but weren't quite hungry enough for that yet, so we went for something light and fast. They had a Subway restaurant there, and I wanted to see if they made their sandwiches American style (with veggies) or English style (no veg...they call vegetables veg). I was happy to find out they made them the way I'm used to. They even had mayo (though I don't put it on my Subway sandwiches since there are enough veggies to make it moist)! The English don't put mayo on their sandwiches. They think that's really weird and gross, unless you're putting the mayo in tuna or something (hence their dry sandwiches). We were serenaded by a one-man-band while we ate.


Edward's not a sandwich fan, but he bore with us and ate one anyway. Dakota on the other hand, didn't want his because he didn't want all "the works" in his, until his had been eaten down to a stub by someone else, then he finally changed his mind and decided he wanted it after all, and then didn't get very much. He was having fun during this vacation showing us his teenager side. Actually, he's a fun kid and cracked us up with his sense of humor. Also, he does things for you most other people wouldn't dare do. We jokingly told him to wipe Hyatt (who was calling from the bathroom for a wiper), thinking he'd never do it, and next thing we knew Hyatt was in the room because Dakota had wiped him! What a guy!!!! I dare you to show me a better teen! Weston and Dallas would freak out when we told them to wipe Hyatt.

We left the quaint town and headed home, only to hit Sunday night traffic. Everyone was headed back to London, so it took forever to get back to the house, and we were too tired to go to a pub by the time we pulled into Eynsford.