Nottingham/Sherwood Forest

We got off the train in Nottingham and immediately saw Nottingham Castle looming over the city. The city very different than i thought it would be. I thought it was going to be a small town with a few Robin Hood attractions. Much to my surprise the city was pretty big and even had a couple of colleges. Because of the colleges the population included a lot of younger people which we weren't used to. The city was filled with huge hills which was cool but made it difficult for us to carry our packs while searching for the hotel. We followed Hunter's Garmin until we got in the general vicinity of our hotel and then we weren't sure where to go so we walked in one of the colleges and a security guard looked it up on the internet. With him pointing us in the right direction we were at the hotel in no time. We checked in, dropped off our packs, and then headed out to scout out the area. We walked to the center of town and found the visitors center where we had planned on buying the Robin Hood pass which would get us into a lot of the attractions and even give us discounts on food and other stuff not related to the Robin Hood sites. Turns out that they had just sold the last ones earlier that morning. Bummed about that we went in search of some food. We wound up gorging ourselves at the local Pizza Hut(buffet!). Then we went to the Galleries of Justice exhibit where we learned about crime and punishment in the olden days and Hunter and I were in a mock trial where we were both sentenced to death by a 16 year old! After checking out the galleries we went back to the hotel and got a pretty decent nights rest.
The next day(Saturday) we woke up early and headed to Sherwood Forest, home of the legendary Robin Hood. We ate breakfast and then walked around the shops and Robin Hood exhibits before heading into the woods. There were tons of trails and we saw the Grand Oak, a super old tree that was huge. We pretended to be Robin Hood for a while climbing trees and stuff and then we went back to the restaurant and ate lunch. After lunch we got trained in the art of archery with a longbow by a cool guy in Robin Hood garb named Elliot. Hunter was already practiced in archery and even competed back in the day. I however was new to it but did much better than Hunter and I thought I was going to do. I killed a boar with one shot... as did Hunter. Also Hunter got a sweet bulls-eye which I couldn't match.
We then returned to Nottingham and went to the castle which was a BIG let-down. They didn't have any medieval stuff in there! But there was an exhibit for the new Robin
Hood movie which pretty much made up for it. We got to see all of the costumes of the main characters and some of the props they used in the movie. Then we went down the street to the oldest pub in England named "Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem" because it was evidently a meeting place for knights going to fight in the Crusades. After that we started back to the hotel but got sidetracked by a TGIFridays on the way. We ate there and then went and had another rest at our hotel. The next morning we woke up and went into town to go on a tour of the caves underneath the city of Nottingham. It was pretty interesting but basically sucked in comparison to Sherwood.
After our time in the caves we ate at a Chinese Buffet before heading to Birmingham to stay with Andrew Michael.