Saturday, April 30, 2011

Day 18 London Eye Aug. 15, 2010


Sunday! We went to church in the Hyde Park Ward. Next door are 2 huge and free museums. The Victoria & Albert has a "Cast Room" with exact replicas of lots of famous statues. You get to see all the famous sculptures in the same place!
In the picture you see a replica of Michel- angelo's David, plus the concrete thing is a cast of one entire house from the a ghetto in India. It was built in the cracks between other houses. You can climb around inside. It's 2 levels, but it's tiny. A family of 8 people lived in the original house.
Then we walked around Parlia- ment and West- minster and started down Whitehall. Around the corner, underneath the Treasury building, are Churchill's War Rooms. This underground complex was his headquarters. Churchill really was the man for the times. You can hear him speaking. His inspired speeches galvanized the country in their darkest hours. You see the famous shot of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, surrounded with smoke during the Blitz. People stayed up on the roof 24/7 guarding it from burning shrapnel. The Brits would emerge from the subways after a bombing raid, and look to see if the dome of St. Paul's was still there. It became a symbol of their determination.

We came upon a parade and found we'd just missed the Prince. We saw the same folks on TV later that night.


We took the subway and then 2 taxis to the British Museum. I wanted to show them the Rosetta Stone, which cracked the code to Egyptian hieroglyphics. People are always surprised that it's not bigger, because it was so important to our understanding of history. At about 4 feet high, it's totally covered in tiny engraved writing in Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphics. Afterward, we had to zoom to get to a concert at Westminster Abbey by 5:00. We found a red double-decker bus going our way, hopped on, and got there with minutes to spare!

That evening we had tickets to ride the London Eye. This giant ferris wheel turns around once in 30 minutes, providing stellar views of the city with the Thames River, London Bridge, and Parliament far below.
Thirty people ride in one pod, getting a ride they will never forget.


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