Warwick Castle.

Warwick Castle is Britain's most famous castle (also called 'Britain's Ultimate Castle') and is definitely worth a visit, about an hour by train from Birmingham. It's a 'working castle' with tons of actors in period costumes, walking around and interacting in character (ie. knight, princess, queen, jesters, jail guards etc etc etc). The hundreds of kids visiting the castle loved every second of this and it was very entertaining for us as well.

We began the day at the 'birds of prey' show...here is Denise before the show began (we all had no idea how impressive the show was going to be).

This man lives for his birds, and the birds do whatever he signals, it was quite amazing. Their wing span was impressive and they often swooped down right over the crowd, producing lots of oooo's and aaahhh's.

...there's a bird flying up to a trainer in the top of this tower (which we later climbed, and you can see behind Denise in the first picture). Then it swooped down right over our heads, you think it's gonna take you out!

Here's a knight telling a story of how he slayed a dragon right at the gates of the castle...actually it was pretty boring, haha.

Denise meets the Queen!

Marc is sure to take pictures of anything related to food...

On our ascent to the tallest tower...

Views of Warwick from the castle tower (8 miles from Stratford-upon-Avon)

Another view...to the right of the previous

King Chartrand the 1st addresses his crowds of fans...

Part of the experience was for children to complete 'knight school'. It was pretty cute, they were knighted at the end of the training. We saw lots of knights like this little guy running all over the place. Here we're waiting for the trebuchet (catapult) show from the other side of the river...they launched a fire ball, it was awesome.

And here we are, the castle behind us.

Also recommended on this tour...the prison experience - we all screamed, Marc did at least twice!

....this is a video of the fire ball launch, hopefully it works for you!