London

We spent three nights and two full days in London. On day one we went to the Westminster part of town and saw Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, the traditional double Decker busses, and the famous phone booths that are not used as phone booths anymore. We spent most of our time in the Underground War Museum where Winston Churchill and his war cabinet worked in a secret underground area thought to be protected from the London bombings during WWII. In the evening we heard the London Symphony perform Aaron Copeland's Symphony #3 which includes the famous Fanfare for the Common Man - a very brassy piece.

There were more police on the street than normal in the Westminster area due to Trump being in town. And lots of American flags.

On day 2 we took a history walking tour of the City of London, the oldest part of London. Ann Jones was our guide. She was very informative and fun to listen to. We learned a lot about the great fire of 1666. We continued walking around some other neighborhood and green spaces not on the typical tourist path. That evening we went to Piccadilly Circus in the West End and then saw the musical The Book of Mormon.

Tidbits:
- we were evacuated twice by fire alarms - once from our room in the dorm we stayed in the first night, and again from the underground museum. Thankfully both false alarms.
- our BnB had a washer so we were able to machine wash all of our clothes. This made Eileen happy!
-we have traveled by subway, taxi, Uber, train, bus (both long distance and local), ferry, and plane on this trip
- both evenings the streets outside of the pubs were crazily but peacefully filled with after work drinkers
- we were surprised by the number of bicycle riders on the busy streets - tons of them.Читать далее