London!

Mom and I took a trip to London on our way to meet Dad in Paris. We stayed at the County Hall and our room had a head-on view of Big Ben and Parliament! The trip was four days, so I'll keep it short with just the highlights:

The first sight we saw was Westminster Abbey. Aside from being simply a church, many important figures have been buried here, mostly monarchs and nobility spanning at least 7 centuries. While beautiful, historic, and engaging, it felt a bit like mom's garage--instead of everyone's junk being crammed and cluttered in every nook and cranny, it was dead people.

The next day we took a tour of Stonehenge all the way up to Bath. This was the part I looked forward to the most. Nowadays, regular visitors are not permitted inside the henge, so I was very excited to have this privilege before the site opened to the public. While some people don't share the thrill of ancient, pre-historical monuments, I was giddy. This is a structure that baffled even the ancient Romans, and still remains mysterious today.

Along the way to Bath, we stopped at the charming village of Lacock that predates medeival times to have lunch. The tavern itself has been in business for 600 years and is still supported by the original wooden beams (which are themselves 1,300 years old)!

The Roman baths were my next favorite site. Buried and forgotten for 800 years, they were rediscovered just over 100 years ago. They were built by the Romans at the end of the 1st century A.D. and, remarkably, much of the original piping and plumbing still remains functional, intact, and water-tight almost 2,000 years later! It was cool to see how cities get built over themselves, as we descended through time (about 30 feet) to the actual site--much of which still hasn't been excavated. The amazing part about the discovery of the baths (built on a natural hotspring) is how old the water is. It probably fell as rain over 10,000 years ago!

After, we went to Shakespear's reconstructed Globe Theater and saw a production of Romeo and Juliet. Although it's not the original building, it was cool to get a taste of what the theater experience was like for people in Shakespear's time--without microphones or electric lighting. I found the play to be enjoyable, but I have read Romeo and Juliet several times and the play was easier for me to follow despite the volume and language issues.

The final highlight I will share is the Tower of London. The sheer number of people made it slightly less enjoyable for me, but it was still exciting to stand on the site where several of King Henry VIII's enemies were beheaded, including his wife Anne Boleyn. Many political prisoners have been detained and sometimes killed here, passing through the infamous "Traitor's Gate"--including Queen Elizabeth I and Thomas More. I really got a kick out of the Ravens that are kept at the Tower! Most interestingly, there still remains the remnants of an ancient Roman wall within the tower as well (which predates the Tower itself).

I might add as an afterthought that Mom and I felt very proud of ourselves for figuring out London's tube system and navigating successfully with maps--with no mishaps, wrong trains or asking for directions!

***Note: Our London photos are split into sections, roughly by day. To view all our photos be sure to click on both albums on the right! Thanks for perservering--now off to Paris!