Two weekends ago Matthew and I took a ten hour round-trip drive down to Ashland, Oregon on the California border. Oregonians know that Ashland is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and America's first outdoor Elizabethan theatre. This year Ashland is celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Shakespeare Festival, but sadly our brief afternoon in Ashland did not coordinate with the performance times.
Ashland, however, caters in many other ways to the Shakespeare enthusiasts and book lovers who are drawn by the festival. Among a slew of antique and book stores, one of our finds was Antiquarium Books & Antiques. The shop is packed with interesting antiques, but the walls were lined with every kind of book a collector could dream of. In the classics section I found a 1937 edition of Oscar Wilde Selected Works and a (not-so-antique) reprint of the original 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights. Matthew found a 1975 Baseball Encyclopedia. One of the owners checked us out and was very kind to give us a little bit of a discount on our stack of books which amounted to getting Wuthering Heights for free. Can't complain about that.
After perusing Antiquarium the rest of our time in Ashland consisted of window shopping, dinner at the Standing Stone Brewing Company, a walk through surprisingly expansive Lithia Park and dessert from a local homemade ice cream shop. We questioned whether such a short visit would be worth the long drive, but while we do plan to return and see a show at that outdoor theatre we were certainly satisfied on the long drive back to Portland. I would call Ashland a must-see for lovers of Shakespeare, antiques, books, and quiet little towns with plenty of character.
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