Happy St. George's Day! And happy birthday, William!

Friday was St. George's Day. St. George is the patron saint of England; I believe he slayed a dragon, I'm not sure what else he did. The flag of England in theory should be shown on St. George's Day, which is a white flag with a red cross (NOT to be confused with the British flag, the Union Jack we're familiar with). The people of England, with their huge amount of English pride, do basically nothing for their official holiday.
BUT, the good news is that scholars believe that William Shakespeare was born and died on that same day, April 23rd. That means that literary and theatrical nerds from all over the world travel to Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon to celebrate. Our program had the wonderful chance to participate in this pilgrimage.
Once we got to Stratford-upon-Avon on Friday, we almost immediately visited Shakespeare's grave, his birthplace, and the house he was living in when he died. The grave was, well, a grave. Really, I've never understood the big deal about seeing graves. The birthplace was fun to visit; in honor of Shakespeare's birthday photography was allowed in the house and there was mead tasting in the garden (I kind of liked mead, by the way). I almost couldn't tear myself away from the giftshop! The last house was kind of boring; the garden is getting torn apart right now because archeologists are digging it up to find Shakespeare relics, and the house didn't have much to see.
After our museum visits, Katy, Whitney, Sarah, and I happened upon a souvenir shop which was selling cheap St. George's Day items. We couldn't help but get in the spirit- each of us got a little English flag to wave. It got better, though. When we went to a pub for dinner, we discovered a collection of St. George's Day English flag crowns- like Burger King crowns, only selling ale instead of burgers. Katy bravely asked the bartender if we could have some. Apparently the bartender was a little puzzled, but they let us take them. We spent the majority of the remainder of our time in Stratford-upon-Avon with crowns on our heads and little flags waving.
That night we watched a performance of King Lear by the Royal Shakespeare Company. All I can say is, wow. It was intense, to say the least. A tragedy with themes of the Apocalypse and betrayal and insanity, it was incredibly well done but also very hard to watch.
We all spent the night in various Bed & Breakfasts (sooooo nice after our hostel experiences!). The next day we hurried off to Anne Hathaway's house (the house where Shakespeare's wife lived before she married). It was very lovely, had beautiful gardens and another all-too-tempting gift shop. After we finished, we went to the parade. Every year they hold a parade with important town officials, various schools, boy scouts, girl guides, drama groups, and other random people. The parade ends at Shakespeare's grave, by which everyone lays down flowers. It was a lot of fun, and an older couple in the parade gave Katy and I sprigs of rosemary when they saw our English spirit (rosemary is traditionally worn on that day to symbolize remembrance). I decided that when I have kids I want to dress up in Elizabethan clothes with my husband and my little kids and take part in the parade. You would agree with me if you saw how adorable the kids were!
Probably the other best part of the day was our ferry ride. For 50 pence (roughly 75 cents) we got take about a 5-minute ferry ride across the river. For the celebration, a Royal Shakespeare Company actor rode on the boat and recited a sonnet to us. So lovely! There were also actors roaming the town and randomly acting scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was always fun when we stumbled upon a fight scene.
On the train ride home we had one more adventure. It just so happened that we were sharing our train car with two of the actors from King Lear! One of them, Kathryn Hunter, played a really, really great fool, and she's also been in some films (like Harry Potter). We were able to get their autographs and talk to them for a short time. The play was so good, we were slightly starstruck by our run-in.
My weekend was so much fun! I still can hardly believe I had the opportunity to do all of this. I am so blessed. :)