EIS – London to Coventry (Day 4)

(8/21/2010) (To start, as you can see from the date to the left and the date of this posting above, I have been very busy and also didn't have much in the way of battery charging ability (you'll hear why later in this posting).  I was using the laptop as little as possible so I had power to download each day's pictures.  We seem to be back in order and will begin to publish posts as often as possible to catch up.  I am at least 5 daily posts behind, not counting this posting.)

Today we started out early, leaving the hotel, in our tour bus, at 8:00am. We will reach our final destination, the town of Coventry, home of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom later in the afternoon. On our way, we will stop in a number of towns including Oxford.

On our way to our first stop, we pass Winsor Castle in the background. We did not stop and I took a couple of pictures from the bus, but you cannot see very much. We continued on our way and did stop for a short visit at Hampton Court Palace.

Hampton Court Palace's front view has the traditional British Tudor façade. However, the castle underwent renovations during the reign of one of the Kings, when the Queen (Mary?) was having the castle torn down in favor of building the castle similar to that of the Castle in Versailles, France. Except for the front, everything was destroyed and then rebuilt with the new design. This section was saved because the Queen died and the King no longer cared to change things.

After leaving Hampton Court Palace, we proceeded through the country side. They grow mainly wheat and Barley. At one section of the road where the Thames occupied the east (right) side of the road and a field on the west (left) side, the tour guide told us this is the place where King John I signed the Magna Carta. King John I so disliked by the people of England, that no other King has had the name John.

We next stopped in Oxford (I feel smarter already) where the famous and oldest university exists. After leaving the bus, the guide took us for a short walk to point out some of the important buildings at the University.  Between two buildings of Oxford is a replica of the span that is in Venice Italy. 

One of the things mentioned included the fact that a number of the buildings became film locations for the Hogwarts School from the Harry Potter movies. You could indeed image the buildings having been in the movie. The old medieval look of some of the buildings did look similar, but I’d have to see the movies again. However, we did not gain access to any of the buildings so any of the movie shot inside, we would not be able to tell. There are 35 colleges in Oxford which has a population of 1,350,000.

Just before we were to meet the bus before leaving, we went into the Ashmolean Museum. They have many pieces from ancient Greece and other locations. We could have spent a whole day in there, but we only had about 15 minutes. I quickly took a number of pictures; you could take pictures so these are legal, just no flash which is why Carmen did not take any pictures. Some of them are blurry because I was shooting so slowly, but you get the picture. Some of the statues were from the early 12th century.

After leaving Oxford we travel and can a large valley view of the rolling hills with all the different fields, it looks like a patch work quilt, just beautiful and it goes on for miles. Along the way, we see these large a number of birds of prey that are call kites.

We made our way to Shakespeare’s home town Stratford-upon-Avon. The name comes from the fact that the city sits next to the river Avon, therefore Stratford-upon-Avon. We first stopped at Anne Hathaway’s house, no not the movie star, but Shakespeare’s wife’s house where she grew up. It is a thatch roof house, and as we learn, there are about 250,000 such houses in England (mostly in the southern regions because of the climate). This is the location we also have our tour picture taken and no, we did not buy one.

Leaving Anne Hathaway’s house we headed down town to visit the house where Shakespeare grew up. We took a couple quick pictures from outside, but we did not go in. There are many buildings in town that still exist from Shakespeare’s time. They are white with black beams. There are many examples of these some with the second floor jutting out a foot or so. Many businesses have moved in, but kept the building intact.

Instead, we opted to walk around town and headed to the river where we heard that house barges tie up to the river’s bank. When we got there were surprised to see the size of the house barges. I think we expected the barges to have similar sizes to those we viewed in Amsterdam which had about a 12ft beam. However, these were very narrow looking to be not much wider than 5ft or so and around 50ft long.

We were walking around the river and had to get back to the bus shortly, so instead of walking back around the river, we opted for a foot ferry across the river. 50 pence each or 1lb (about $1.75 for the both of us) we crossed on the foot ferry. A hand crank which connected to a chain strung from one bank to the other operates the ferry. All the operator has to do is crank the handle in the direction the ferry is going to pull the ferry along its way. Pretty neat, I’d say.

Interestingly, I found a sign in one of the shops along the pedestrian walkway around Shakespeare’s house that sold “Dr. Thaddeus Bombay’s original recipe Butterbeer” available exclusively in their Victorian Tea Garden. Now I know that Universal (Islands of Adventure theme park) in Florida just opened the Harry Potter section which also has Butterbeer available. They had to send samples to J. K. Rowling's until they got the taste correct. I wonder if she lives somewhere around here?

From Stratford-upon-Avalon, we headed to the once beautiful old English town of Coventry. World War II bombings devastated the town center, which leveled 95% of the old buildings including the cathedral. Rebuilding the city over the years included rebuilding a new cathedral, however the ruins of the bombed out cathedral remain.

We left the cathedral, headed down a couple of foot streets, and arrived at a square in town. Here is a statue of Lady Godiva in all of her finery, of not. Inscriptions on the base of the statue speak of her ride. We also found out, how true is undetermined at this point, that everyone in town at the time closed their shutters as to not look upon here during her ride. However, Tom Peeping chose to look and that is how the story of “peeping Tom” started.

We left Coventry and just outside of town, we arrived at our hotel for the night. We have dinner, included with the tour, mostly because there is no place else close by to eat. By the way dinner, a buffet was very good.

After getting to our room, I plugged my power converter into the wall, and then plugged my battery charger in and POOF – the power to the whole room goes out. Not sure how, but I blew the power to our room, but also the room next door. We had to get new rooms. I think my power cord to the AA battery charger is now toast.

I am writing this in our new room and very late in the evening and the power converter is not working all the time (it cuts in and out as it gets hot) I may not get this day posted until later, much later.

Until later, Bob and Carmen – EIS.