"Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once."

Okay, that was the longest blog post title ever. That fabulous quote was given by Caesar in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. We spent the second half of our bank holiday visiting Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford.

There are five houses in Stratford that are linked to William Shakespeare's life. We visited three of the five properties and we started at his birthplace.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the house but we were allowed to wander from room to room and touch various displays. For example, Shakespeare's father was a glove maker and there was a room set up as a workshop where we could try on different types of gloves.

The next "house" we went to was called Nash's house. I put "house" in quotations because the house was no longer there, it was an archaeological dig site.

As the story goes, this was Shakespeare's final home before he died. When he passed on his daughter inherited the property. She had no children of her own so when she died her husband's family inherited the property. Shakespeare's plays were quite popular when he was alive, so when he died his "final home" became a site that attracted a lot of tourists. Nash, or the gentleman who owned the home got tired of people peeping through his windows and climbing over his fence that he had the home destroyed.

Fortunately nothing was ever built on that plot of land after the house was destroyed. It was persevered for years as a garden, but now it has become a dig site to uncover treasures presumably owned by Shakespeare himself. You can check out and follow what the archaeologists have discovered at http://www.digforshakespeare.com/

The final house we visited was called Hall's Croft. It was where Shakespeare's daughter Susanna and her husband Dr. John Hall lived. They were very wealthy and had fine furniture. The most interesting part of the house was the display of medical equipment presumably used by or similar to the tools used by Dr. Hall. Some of his surgical tools looked so blunt and barbaric. It makes me grateful for the medical technology we have today.

To finish off the day we strolled through the Hall's Croft garden...

By the end of the day we were all feeling a little tired, Spencer was no exception...

Poor little guy, he didn't even make it back to the car before he nodded off, but he did sleep all the way home.