My crazy-fun-awesome-exhausting weekend!!!

So this weekend has been a whirlwind of trains, travel, pictures and lots of fun!  Let's start with Thursday night, shall we?  On Thursday we went to Stratford Upon Avon to go see the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Titus Andronicus.  Stratford was a little bit touristy but we did get to walk around and see Shakespeare's grave which was pretty cool.  We had about 5 hours to kill when we were in Stratford between the time we got off the bus and the time the play started so some of us grabbed food (I got fish and chips for the first time on this trip!) and then sat by the river and watched the swans and ducks.  I don't know if you've ever been up close to a swan before but they're kind of terrifying.  They look all beautiful from a distance but when you get up close they just look really fierce and sometimes they hiss at you and ruffle their feathers if you don't give them food, which I can understand, we all get hangry sometimes!  But back to Shakespeare... Titus was in a small theatre anfd we were sitting in the second row back from the stage.  Because I had read the play for class and discussed it I knew what was coming and was a little bit nervous about it.  Titus is one of Shakespeare's bloodiest plays, I mean when it starts the Roman warrior Titus Andronicus has already lost 21 of his 25 sons.  The body count just goes up from there, as does the amount of gore.  I had never seen an RSC production before but I thought it was spectacular!  It was a two and a half hour play but I was so entranced it seemed to be over in 20 minutes.  It was stressful, unnerving and also ridiculously hilarious if you have a good sense of morbid humor, which I'm glad to say I do!  We didn't get back to Cambridge until around midnight and we had to get up at 6am the next morning, ugh!

On Friday we hopped on train number 1 en route to Bath.  Bath was really beautiful.  It was crowded with graduates and tourists but it still felt out of the way.  I got to go to the Jane Austen center, hang out in a park and see the Roman Baths.  The Baths were used as a sort of social place where people could go, hang out, relax and feel a more spiritual connection to the Goddess Minerva for whom the monument was built.  A lot of the architecture is still in tact which is really incredible to think about considering they haven't been fully used in centuries!  I also finally got my ice cream in Bath!!!  I'm an admitted ice cream addict and have been going through ice cream withdrawals in Cambridge.  There's not that many shops to buy ice cream in Cambridge which is surprising considering the amount of tourists here.  Every time we've gone out to get ice cream, the shops have been closed, booooo!  But, in Bath I got a delicious scoop of blackcurrent ice cream and a scoop of honeycomb, here I am with it super happy :)

That night we stayed in a hostel which was a little grimy and a little loud but, hey, we had cheap beds, which is really all that matters.  Saturday morning we got up early again (after a later-than-expected night out in pubs and out dancing) and hit up train 2 for Cardiff.  Cardiff was much more of a city than Bath was but once you made it down my the water, it was really pretty. The weather in Cardiff was so perfect and I got to see the ocean again!  I have never lived far from the water and this trip is the longest I have ever been this far away from the ocean so it was nice to see waves again.  I'm also a HUGE geek and Cardiff is a Doctor Who hot spot.  I really enjoyed going to the Doctor Who experience and seeing all the places where parts from the show were filmed.  By yesterday afternoon though, we were all so exhausted that we just wanted to lay in a park then hop on a train and go back home (weird how after only two weeks here Cambridge feel like home).  We were greasy haired, un- showered and had layers of sweat and dried sweat on our bodies.  Our feet hurt and we were sunburnt and just beat.  The trip from Cardiff to Cambridge seemed to take forever because we all just wanted bed.  When we finally got back and saw familiar streets and landmarks and crawled into our beds which were unfamiliar to us two weeks ago, I know I was relieved.  Happy, exhausted and relieved to be back in such a great place after an amazing weekend with friends!