Exploring Stratford in Taranaki – Day 52

So we’re going to Stratford which is the Shakespeare town of New Zealand. I know what you’re thinking. Shakespeare? He never even went to New Zealand. What are you talking to me about?

We’re just doing a few work chores before we head into Stratford today but from the campervan all we can see is pure wetness. It is wet day. we are going to the beautiful town ship of Stratford which for some kind of obscure reason is the Shakespeare town of New Zealand. We arrive right on time in Stratford to assist to the first representation of the Glockenspiel Glockenspiel glockenspiel glockenspiel in German I have no idea how to pronounce that word. So glockenspiel is basically a very big tower with animated robots in it. It’s a tower of robots telling you the most epic William Shakespeare story Romeo and Juliet. if romeo was a machine and Juliet was a machine and they had a love story to make in less than three minutes with only a dollar fifty budget you will get the Stratford Glockenspiel. We’re here to see the glockenspiel in action. One by one Juliet appears then Romeo appears they are exchanging words then Juliet appears a bit higher up the clock tower then romeo appears above the clock tower then they both appear on the side of the clock tower and then and then and then at the end listen this is the good part, they both appear together because they are now together and they are now in love. It’s a magical story. this is the perfect time to come to Stratford. Why’s that? Because there’s a lot of undercover sections and you make the best out of them when it’s raining.

So here’s what just happened right here. laura picked up a pamphlet and realised that teat for a cow is spelled t-e-a-t but she’s been spelling it t-i-t on the entire last blog post so that’s pretty good. Ok second half hopefully no one’s got that far. there’s me holding a teat. Now the rain is pouring down on us and we’re like Ok, we need a timeout. We also have grocery shopping to do and we just want to procrastinate from doing the grocery shopping. Let’s go and get a coffee somewhere. And we find this really cool cafe called Cafe x.o.x or Cafe kiss hug kiss. And it looks really quirky like through the windows you can see all sorts of colours going on there’s obviously an art gallery as well so it’s got paintings all over the walls and there’s lots of stuff on shelves and things so this looks like our sort of cafe. We go in there and we get some coffee, some Robin has standard hot chocolate. See Robin was really upset that we didn’t find any board games when we went to the op-shops but in this cafe each table has it’s own game to play. We play connect 4 and solitaire and we play that with some little wooden pegs in a little wooden game set and you know, it’s a good way to spend a rainy afternoon. Just drinking coffee playing games. today we are following Laura’s intuition. She thinks that there is a swing bridge somewhere around this park which is literally about like a hundred metres by hundred metres. Oh look everyone, I found a swing bridge. And is that running water as well when Robin said there was no way there could be a swing bridge with running water here. I am being really upset right now. According to Google Maps there is no river in about a 50km radius so I guess that thing down here is not a river. so Laura did find a swing bridge. Laura how do you feel? Well, just when you start to think no one believes in you you just have to believe in yourself and you find a swing bridge. Want to give me a high five. No. You don’t deserve high five. You should give me a high five. We actually went to do grocery shopping that we actually recorded in a masterful, beautiful way which is a time lapse of our trolley. believe it or not, this was the most action we got today.

Stratford is like the central hub of Taranaki. it’s a good access point to Mt Taranaki and the Egmont National Park. And also Stratford is wait for this fact it’s going to blow your mind. Stratford it’s street names Stratford’s street names. I can’t even say it. It’s just too good. Stratford’s street names are all named after William Shakespeare’s work. For instance, we have Romeo street, we have Hamlet Street, we have Cressida Street, we have Page Street and the list goes on. Anyway, it’s really fascinating fact about Stratford and we can’t wait to see all these street names which we film none of.