It’s the end of day 2 in London, and we’ve been so busy it’s our first post! Here’s a recap: After an overnight flight, we arrived at Heathrow on Friday morning and settled in to our hotel, which is about a half hour train ride outside of the city center in London. We headed out to explore Southwark, which in Shakespeare’s day was the center for arts and culture, and which today is still a cultural hub.
We checked out the Tate Modern and walked over to Tower Bridge before dinner. After dinner we went to the reconstructed Globe Theatre for an absolutely stunning production of Othello. What a way to kick off our trip — we spent two hours being awed by the transformational power of the arts!
After being up for over 24 hours (plane sleep doesn’t count!) we headed back to the hotel for some much-needed rest. Yesterday morning we were up bright and early for a bus tour of London, which included many of the most famous landmarks in this historic city. Our guide, Pepe, was delightful and told stories about history and current pop culture trivia like the location of Madonna’s house. We ended our tour at King’s Cross station, home of Platform 9 3/4 and its magical portal to the Hogwarts Express. We had a fun photo opp there and then broke for lunch.
After lunch we walked over to the British Library, which boasts at least one copy of every book written in English. Yes, all of them. Their “treasures” on display included Jane Austen’s reading glasses and the only existing copy of the Beowulf manuscript, which dates back to around 1000 AD. We spent the rest of our afternoon exploring the area around Leicester square. Some of us shopped in secondhand bookstores while others checked out the National Gallery.
We met up for a dinner of Bangers and Mash and birthday cake for Jake! We got back to the hotel to settle in for a good night’s sleep, even though we lost an hour due to daylight savings. We packed a lot into our day, our last full day in London. We saw so much history and got a taste of current events (we managed to walk into a Brexit protest march and the filming of the new live action Mary Poppins). Today we’re off to Bath and Stonehenge.