Getting through customs once we first arrived in England was a little harry. A very surly customs agent made us waste an extra 30 minutes before we could finally get through. After a night of no sleep, my irritation level was high. But we got through soon enough and moved on to the rental car fiasco.
The agent was very nice and patient with me and my sleep deprived brain. About an hour later, we were in a car, much more costly than I had anticipated, and almost ready to head out. It took an additional 2 trips more back and forth inside the rental car agency (they'd given us a very fancy car that we could not figure out how to use. I'm not technologically minded, and I don't drive or own fancy things). Eventually, with my nerves a little extra frazzled from frustration and sleep deprivation, we left London.
It's about a 2 hour drive from London up to Warwick, where we were staying for the first two nights of our trip. As we had just gotten off a long overnight flight, our rental agent recommended we check into a hotel, go to a pub and get a Sunday roast meal, and then go to sleep.
That's essentially what we ended up doing. Such great advise.
The next day we spent most of our time at Warwick Castle. This is one of my favorite castles to visit. It's big, it's fun, it's what you expect a medieval castle to look like. Plus they have a really interesting birds of prey show twice a day that's always fun. You can also pay to take a few archery lessons, as well as watch them shoot the trebuchet. Unfortunately, because it was not quite tourist season yet, the trebuchet demonstrations weren't happening for another week. So sad.
But we had fun wondering around and wearing ourselves out. We then popped over to Stratford Upon Avon to see Shakespeare's former town. It's a beautiful little town to wander through. While we were lucky with sunny weather, it was extremely cold. We ended the night with a play in Stratford. It turned out to be a bit . . . . too long. It was obvious it was a new play, as a lot of kinks needed to be worked out. And the whole length of the play needed to be whittled down from 3 hours to 2. Again, it was an adventure.
A pretty successful day 1 of the trip.
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