These are just some of the things you'll see...
Some of the most quaint, beautiful, and historic places in the world!
The Paris Opera House
The beginnings of the opera house in Paris actually originated with Napoleon III when he arrived with his wife for the premier of a new singer. His party was bombed by dissenters, after which Napoleon III asked for an opera house with a discreet and covered side entrance through which royalty could enter.
The opera house seats two thousand and has seventeen stories on three acres. Seven stories are below ground, which contributed to the mystique of the building. The lower levels consist of chorus rooms, green rooms, ball rooms, set rooms, cellars, closets, dressing rooms, and many other kinds of rooms that contain the spooky objects from the many operas produced at the opera house. This (and the unintentional lake that arose when a worker knocked against a pipe underground) inspired Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, which was later turned into Andrew Lloyd Webber's musi
cal.
The Globe Theatre
The original Globe was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed on June 29, 1613 by a fire during Henry the Eighth after a cannon misfired during the 
performance. Another Globe was rebuilt on that site, but was closed in 1642 by the Puritans, as were all theatres in London. It was again destroyed in 1644 to make room for tenement housing and in 1989, beneath a car park on Park Street, the remnants of its foundation were discovered. In 1997, a modern reconstruction of the Globe was opened and is about 750 feet from the site of the original Globe.
At the base of the stage, there was an area called the pit, where people could stand and watch performances while snacking on hazelnuts. This is known because, during the excavation of the Globe, nutshells were found preserved in the dirt. Around the pit were three levels of seating, more expensive than the standing room.
Stratford-upon-Avon
Located in south Warwickshire, England, the town lies on the River Avon, and owes its tourist status to being the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Tourist attractions include the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the home of the Royal 
Shakespeare Company. There are five houses relating personally to Shakespeare, which are cared for by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. These include Hall's Croft (home of Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah and her husband Dr. John Hall), Anne Hathaway's cottage, the home of Shakespeare's wife's family, and Mary Arden's House, the family home of his mother. Also, located here is the Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was baptized and buried. Non-Shakespearean attractions include the Stratford Butterfly Farm.
Interesting note:
Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey author), served in the Royal Air Force here in the 1940's. His short story, The Curse, is set in a post-apocolyptic Stratford.
Old Vic
The Old Vic is a theatre located near Waterloo Station in London and was also the name of a reperatory company that was based in the theatre. The company was formed under Laurence Olivier in 1963, as the core of the National Theatre of Great Britain.
The theatre itself was founded in 1818 by James Jones, James Dunn, and Thomas Serres, who as a painter, had the formal patronage of Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, naming the theatre the Royal Coburg Theatre. The theatre was a minor theatre and was forbidden to show "serious drama", but when actor Edmund Kean played six Shakespeare plays in six nights to the masses, the theatre's position changed, most notably because of his curtain call statement: "I have never acted to such a set of ignorant, unmitigated brutes as I see before me."
Through changes in ownership, the name of the theatre changed to the The Royal Victoria Theatre, and then The Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern, and was by then already called "Old Vic".
Interesting notes:
-The Old Vic was badly damaged during the Blitz.
-In 2003, Kevin Spacey was appointed as new artisitic director of the Old Vic Theatre Company. Mr. Spacey appears personally in one or two shows per season and also directs other shows.
The Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is located at Stratford-upon-Avon, with bases also in London and Newcastle. In 1959, Peter Hall, the Director of the Memorial Theatre, announced the formation of a premanent company because, according to David Addenbrooke (The Hall Years), he believed Shakespeare needed a "style", a tradition and a unity of direction and acting. The RSC was officially established in 1961.
Famous actors you may know and their productions with the RSC:
Hamlet, starring Sir Ben Kingsley (1976)
Macbeth, starring Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen (1977)
Hamlet, starring Kenneth Branagh (1992)
Hamlet, starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart (2008)
Other famous actors who have performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company include:
F. Murray Abraham, Sean Bean, Richard Burton, Dustin Hoffman, Sir Ian Holm, Jeremy Irons, Derek Jacobi, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Alan Rickman, Tim Curry, Daniel Day-Lewis, Charles Dance, Timothy Dalton, Ralph Fiennes, Joseph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Michael Gambon, Jude Law, Vivien Leigh, John Lithgow, Sylvester McCoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, Sir Laurence Olivier, Fiona Shaw, Tilda Swinton, and Zoe Wannamaker.
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is one of the most well known prehistoric monuments in the world and is located in couny Wiltshire, England only eight miles north of Salisbury. Archaeologists think that the monument was erected around 2500 BC, but it may not have been the first stone structure on the site. The culture that produce Stonehenge had no written language and leaves many aspects of the structure up to debate. Many theories from the scientific, to the religious, to the paranormal surround this site.
Stonehenge is also connected to the legends of King Athur. Geoffrey of Monmouth said in his Historia Regum Britanniae that the wizard Merlin directed its removal from Ireland, where it had been constructed by giants, who brought the stones from Africa for their healing properties. Geoffrey also says that Ambrosius Aurelianus, Uther Pendragon, and also Constantine III, were buried inside Stonehenge.
Currently, Stonehenge is a place for the Neo-Druid movement and Neo-Pagans. Modern visitors have been celebrating Midsummer sunrise since the 1870's with the first record of recreated Druidic practices dating back to 1905 with a cermony of the Ancient Order of Druids.
When Stonehenge became open to the public, it was possible to walk around and climb the stones, but this stopped in 1977 when the stones were roped off due to serious erosion. English Heritage permits access only during the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes, as well as through special bookings.
Comedie-Francaise
The Comedie-Francaise is a state theater in Paris, France and has also been know as the Theatre Nautique or the Theatre de la Republique. The best known playwrite associated with the theatre is Moliere, who was considered a patron to French actors.
The Comedie-Francaise was founded by a decree in 1680 by Louis XIV to merge two acting troupes of the time. In 1793, during the French Revolution the comedie-Francaise was closed and the actors imprisoned, but the new government allowed the troupe to be reconstituted in 1799.
Today, the Comedie-Francaise has a 3,000 work repertoire and three theatres in Paris. Also, the Comedie-Francaise is the resting place of the brain of Voltaire.
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town in Cambridgeshire, England, about fifty miles north of London. The city is best known for the University of Cambridge.
The earliest clear evidence of occupation begins around 1000 BC. The first major development in the area began when the romans invaded Britain in around AD 40. The Romans found the area useful as a military outpost from which to defend the River Cam. The settlement remained important even 350 years after the Roman occupation, when the Saxons took over the land. A couple of centuries later, the Vikings conquered the area and their trading habits caused Cambridge to grow rapidly.
In 1068, William of Normandy built a castle on Castle Hill and by Norman times the name of the town had gone from Grentabrige to Cantebrigge. Over time the name of the town changed to Cambridge, while the river Cam was still called the Granta until it later became called the Cam, by virtue of the name of the town.
In 1209, students escaping hostile townspeople in Oxford fled to Cambridge and formed Cambridge University, with the oldest college, Peterhouse, founded in 1284. King's College Chapel, was completed in 1515 during the reign of Henry the VIII.
Today Cambridge is sometimes called "Silicon Fen" because of the growth of high tech businesses that have sprung up in science developments around the city.
The University used to have a seat in the House of Commons, with Sir Isaac Newton as one of the holders of this seat.
Clovelly, Devon
On the north Devon coast of England is a quaint little tourist attraction, famous for its history, beauty, and steep car-free cobbled main street. The village of Clovelly is not accessible by car, so visitors usually park in a car park above the town and enter through the visitor center, which holds a cafe, a gift shop, and tourist shops.
Clovelly was once a fishing village with a population of only 621 (c.1901) Its main street is steep and descends 400 feet to the pier, which is too steep to allow modern wheeled traffic. In fact, sledges are used to move goods. In former times, deliveries were made by donkey. This is no longer true, but donkeys are kept at the village for children to ride or as photo opportunities.
Interesting figures from Clovelly:
-Novelist Charles Kinsley lived here as a child, and his novel Westward Ho! helped to stimulate interest in Clovelly and increase tourism.
-Charles Dickens describes Clovelly in A Message from the Sea and the village was painted by Rex Whistler, whose village scenes were used on fine china.
-Campbell De Morgan, the surgeon who first speculated that cancer begins locally and then spreads around the body, was born in Clovelly.
