Last Friday, Mer and I went down to Actors’ Summit Theater and saw their production Romantic Fools. The play is a set of loosely tied together scenes – if I remember correctly, there were eleven scenes in all. It is a two-person show of one man and one woman, and the whole play is tied together by exploring the theme of the differences in men and women, and the relationship issues that come of it. It is a comedy, and is meant for adult audiences because it deals with some (not explicitly shown) sex issues. I found it quite funny and enjoyed it quite a lot. My burst-out-laughing moment was when the man told us, “Women make me feel……and that’s the problem.” On the whole, Meredith thought I laughed too much.

I was impressed at the show – in my opinion it did not take cheap shots at each gender – or at least, in the places it did, it took cheap shots at both. There were scenes of a woman dating a literal caveman, a man dating an obsessed woman, a man looking for “boring sex,” a engagement dinner that goes slightly wrong, a bar scene where a simple offer of a drink leads to a long reason of why they would never work out as a couple, and more. The play was well acted by two actors I admire a lot, although it was hard to see an actress who I think is sweet and cute drop the f-bomb a few times. The set was very simple – the backdrop was of an apartment kitchen with doors on both sides, and the living space (and bar in some scenes) was set up toward the front of the stage. It was a very entertaining evening, and had the good timing to be right between Meredith’s birthday (January 18th) and mine (January 24th), so it was a mini birthday celebration as well.

Saturday, Mer was game enough to join me in helping out a former colleague named Brittian. Brittian is building a house, mostly by himself (with Nate’s help), and he had gotten to the point where he was ready to paint inside the house. He saw me in the hallway at CVCA, and asked if I could help out. Brittian has always been kind to me and lent me his roofing equipment when I needed to re-roof my house, so I was delighted to get a chance to pay him back, after a fashion. Mer and I got to the house at around 8:30, and Brittian gave us the tour. It is a very cool house; lots of thought went into how Brittian and his family want to live. So, the space on the main floor is large and open, so the family will want to spend time there together. The bedrooms are smaller than normal by today’s standards, but that is the point – the family wants to be together and so put the house spaces toward that goal. Mer and I painted for about two hours, and it was a nice time getting caught up with Brittian. We had previously made plans to see our first CVCA hockey game, so we had to leave at 11:00.

CVCA has a hockey program, and I have two of my Connections students and one of my Fools on the team. Mer has a student on the team as well, so we wanted to see a game. The games are held at Kent State University’s ice rink, and we got there at around 11:30, after having a little trouble finding it. We still were there in time to see the start of the game. Our guys have recently (in the last couple of years) gotten really good, and they were playing a really good team, so it seemed as if it should be a good game. It was, too – all tied up at 1-1 after two periods, but then the other team scored a freak goal (it went all the way around the back of the goal because it was spinning, and then went in), and that broke the game open – we lost 5-2. Still, I had a good time watching the game.

The social aspect was fun too – one of my Connections guys is a huge hockey fan and goes to every game, so I hung out with him. Jim Gaul showed up right before the game started, and Mer was able to happily spend the game chatting with our colleague Amy. I also was able to get a really good cup of hot chocolate and a bunch of mozzarella sticks.

After the game, Mer and I were hungry, so we decided to try the burger chain Five Guys Burgers and Fries. It turned out that Amy and her husband and a friend were all there, so we got to visit more. Five Guys really only makes burgers and fries (except for two items that I do not remember), but they do them really well. I’m sure we will be back.

After the late lunch, we headed home. We finished the evening later by watching the movie The Brothers Grimm, which came out a few years ago. While not a tremendously deep movie, it was entertaining, well shot with good special effects, and had some interesting twists, and it was fun to catch all the references to various folk tales.

You would think that would make for a full weekend, but on Sunday, after church, we went over to the Churchills’ house to watch the football since it was the playoffs. I love spending time with the Churchills, and I was able to bring over my homemade pizza, brownies, and a quart of Handel’s “Spouse like a House” ice cream. Londa had also made her chocolate chip cookies, which are probably the best cookies on the planet. It was a very good eating night! The games were also entertaining, and we got to visit with Zach and Londa, who were kind enough to help set Mer up with her own grading station of desk and lamp.

Not a bad little birthday weekend.

Not too surprisingly, the jet-lagged Riordans took it easy for the first few days back. We both made it to school on Thursday, which was the first day of the second semester. Three of our thirteen London students made it to school that day as well – the rest stayed home and rested. In the evening, Mer and I watched the older original film version of Twelve Angry Men, which was really excellent.

Friday evening Mer and I went to the Root Cafe, which is a cafe run by a local Methodist church. I had never been before – it is a very nice space, and they have excellent hot chocolate. We were there to see a CVCA-based concert. Our friend and fellow teacher Eric taught a J-term class called “Meaningful Music,” where he helped eighteen students start to learn how to craft songs. The concert at the Root Cafe was the product of the students’ work. The students grouped themselves into five bands (I think one band was a non-class band that one student was also a member of, so I think four of the bands were class bands). They played anywhere from one to four songs each, so the concert lasted about ninety minutes, counting changing bands out and brief sound checks.

Mer and I probably would have gone to the concert just to support Eric, but Mer had several students who were in the class, and three members of the Royal Fools were in the class as well, so we both had relationships with some of the students in the class. They really did an excellent job. The bands had a good sound, especially since they had only been together for two weeks. Some of those kids can really really play their instruments – I was especially impressed by the guitar players since I know a little about the instrument. The songs sounded good, and the singers were very talented. Oh – and the place was packed. It was standing-room only; I’m guessing there must have been about a hunderd people on hand, from students to teachers to grandparents. The evening was also used to raise funds for supplies for the Dominican Republic, so it had a ministry aspect as well. It was a good evening, and the jet-lag made me and Meredith low energy, but we were able to stay awake.

Saturday was another mellow day. We had a late brunch at Wally Waffle in Akron, and then went for massages at Massage Envy. I did not think I could handle the pain of a deep massage on my back and neck, so I went for the medium massage, full body. I had not realized how sore my arms and legs were. The massage was most welcome.  We ended the day by going to Perkins Restaurant in Hudson. We bumped into a CVCA parent and one of my Fools (and an excellent guitar player from Meaningful Music). We chatted with them briefly, and then found out when we went to leave that they had picked up the bill for us. That was a real blessing to us, and was very thoughtful.

Sunday was second service at church, so we got to sleep in. I’m in the upcoming church play, and we practice after church, so Mer and I have been going to the late service to facilitate that. After church and practice, we went over to Zach and Londa’s house. They had been kind enough to invite us over to watch the Jets-Patriots game with them, and I was pleased to be able to go. I love the Churchills, and we had a great time, which included way too much food.

Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and so was a holiday for us. Mer spent the entire day grading, while I ran for the first time in two weeks, and then puttered around the house, which included falling asleep on the couch with Jackson (one of our cats) asleep on my chest. The extra day on the weekend pretty much put an end to the last of the jet-lag.

So, things are pretty much back to normal here in the Riordan household, which is still pretty great to me. Maybe not as exciting as London, but I’m fond of it anyway.

The quick summary of London is that it was great!

A few more details, though:
We had smooth sailing overall with transportation. God blessed us with our wacky route to and from London, although I did not know it at the time. Our flight to London went through Atlanta, with a long layover. Atlanta had very good weather and no delays, while the places I wanted to fly out from, New York, New Jersey, and Boston, were all still digging out from a huge snowstorm. If we had not gone through Atlanta, I’m not sure how things would have gone. Also, the long layover in Atlanta gave us all practice in being a touring group, since we all left the airport during the layover. It gave me confidence that we could manage a group of thirteen students, and it all happened in the familiar confines of the U.S. Even the flight back was a blessing in disguise – we avoided the Pittsburgh airport, which was dealing with a lot of snow, and we proved that we could go in and out of Detroit. Detroit has direct-to-Heathrow flights that would be great to use next time, and now I know we can get to Detroit from CVCA fairly easily.

We had great kids along on this trip. They never seriously complained; they occasionally rolled their eyes at my asking for group photos, but they always lined up anyway. They were enthusiastic about the trip, and no one ever complained about any of the sights we went to. The group got along well, and I never saw any bickering or fighting. The students obeyed all the rules we laid out, and they stayed in groups when they had free time. I am proud of the students, and cannot imagine having a better group along for a trip.

God blessed us all with good health. We had some sore muscles from all the walking and standing we did, and Mer had a slight cold going into the trip that cleared up, and one girl asked for some cough drops toward the end of the trip. That is amazing for fifteen people in the winter, with pushing our bodies the way we did.

We had no logistical problems, other than the first restaurant – all the other sights and shows had our reservations, and even the restaurant on the first night was able to accommodate us. I was pleased with all of our live guides, and I think the kids found them entertaining and helpful (especially Deborah and Peter).

From a personal point of view, I think God was asking me to be less fearful and, to be blunt, less ashamed of my faith. I am always afraid that a public show of my faith (like praying or telling people we were a Christian school) was going to open me to ridicule and disdain. To show me my shortcomings, God kept throwing unashamed Christians in my way, in the middle of a very secular city. At Les Mis, I sat next to a young man who plainly told me he was a Christian and his father was a pastor in England. At St. Paul’s, I heard an excellent sermon on going for Jesus, and sermons at evensong services are very rare. Finally, at Heathrow, I came back from the bathroom to find Meredith in conversation with an Englishman who now lived in San Francisco, and he was a lay-pastor of a church there, and was very open about his beliefs. God was gentle, but pretty plain – I need to worry a lot less about what people think about my faith.

On the worry front, God took great care of our group. I think I needed to relax in that. I was snippy with Mer a few times on the trip, for which I am ashamed. I think it came from the stress of the trip, which at some level shows a lack of trust in God’s provision. I still need to do the things I should do – calling for buses, headcounts on the Underground, and so on, but I need to trust God to take care of the rest. I am a focused problem-solver; it makes me good at my job as a computer nerd, and it made me a huge asset to Meredith on this trip. I do need to use those skills, but then relax in my trust of a good and loving God. I have some work to do.

So, it was a great trip. I loved our students, and I learned a lot about London and myself. J-term is a great idea, and I applaud CVCA for taking the risk to let us go on this crazy adventure. I do suppose for the next trip I need to warn the kids to get some miles in walking on the track….

Wednesday finally came, and we had to fly home. Our flight was supposed to be at 9:10, so I wanted to be at the airport at about 6:00. That is pretty cautious, but it would have been quite a task (and probably expense) to get fifteen people home on a different flight. Sadly, our faithful DLR line did not start until 5:30, and the estimated time of using the Underground to get to Heathrow would have put us there at almost 7:00. So, on Monday morning, I had arranged for a sixteen-passenger minibus to pick us up at the hotel at 5:00 and to take us to Heathrow. It only cost about $150 more than taking the Tube would have, and the peace of mind was worth that. Also, it was raining, so we would not have to deal with luggage in the rain.

Mer and I checked on the students between 4:00 and 4:15 to make sure they were all up, and by 4:45 we were all assembled in the lobby. The minibus showed up, and we were underway a little before 5:00. It was interesting to look out through the windows as we wound our way through London – we got to see many of the downtown sights all lit up. We got smoothly to Heathrow by about 6:00 a.m., and after messing around with the auto-check-in machines for a few minutes, some Delta people saw we were a group and checked us in in person. That was helpful. We got through security pretty smoothly, and we were at our gate before 7:00. Better safe than sorry. That extra time gave our kids a chance to get some food, and they also used the time to fill out the London J-term journal and evaluation forms that Meredith had prepared. The feedback the students provided was helpful to us because we hope to do the same trip again in two years.

We boarded the plane right on time, but then we had to wait while they loaded cargo. Then, the pilot had some security concerns about two passengers, so the two passengers were asked to get off the plane and their luggage was unloaded. The ground crew then did a security sweep of the plane. The captain himself came and talked to each section of the plane to reassure everyone, and it seemed to work – no one complained. It did mean that we were well over two hours late in taking off, which meant we were probably going to miss our connecting flight in Detroit that was to take us to Pittsburgh. Mer and I discussed the possibility of getting picked up in Detroit, which is a three-hour drive from CVCA.

The flight went smoothly, and we did get into Detroit late. I called CVCA to let them know that we would probably need a bus to get us at Detroit. By the time we got through customs, our flight to Pittsburgh was scheduled to leave, and we had heard that Pittsburgh was getting hit with a huge snowstorm. We did not even try to find out about our flight or try to rebook – we just called CVCA and asked if they could come and get us, which they agreed to do.

The kids were very patient, especially considering we were in a lobby that only had a snack shop, so there was not real food available. We had eaten on the plane, but we had over three hours to wait. Still, the kids called home on their cell phones (and let me borrow one since our old cell phone could not get any signal). The bus finally arrived at about 7:30, and we had a smooth ride home. We got back to CVCA at about 10:15, and after everyone was picked up, Mer and I got home, and we were thrilled to discover our cat-sitters had shoveled our driveway (we had about a foot of snow in Ohio that day). So, we were able to pull into our garage and get to bed (after checking on the kitties). We were asleep by about 11:00, so it had been about a twenty-three-hour day.

It had been a really great trip!

On Tuesday, we had the only time in our London stay where we could get to our destination with no transfers – the DLR line has a terminus at the Tower of London stop, so we were able to jump on the DLR and jump off, and  then walk to the Tower. It was a nice change of pace.

We met Deborah around 9:00 outside the Tower. This was to be the last tour Deborah would lead for us on this trip, and it was to be the longest – three hours long. As in the National Gallery (the art museum) and the British Museum, there was no way we were going to see everything in the amount of time we had. The Tower is very extensive, and three hours just gets you the highlights.

What surprises most people, me included, is that the Tower of London is not just a tower. It is a sprawling walled complex of buildings that is almost a small village. In fact, there are over one hundred people who live at the Tower to take care of it; many of these are the so-called “Beefeaters” who care for the Tower; their official title is “the Yeoman Warders.” The Tower was started in 1066 by William the Conqueror. He built a huge-for-the-time tower/fortress/palace that was almost one hundred feet tall, as a message to everyone in the area as to who was in charge. The monarchs who came after William continued to add to the structure. In its one-thousand-year history, the Tower has been a palace, a fortress, a prison, an arms depot, and even a zoo where the royal animals were kept until the London Zoo was founded. The Tower is now where the Crown Jewels are kept.

Deborah took us in by a side gate where groups enter. The group entrance is on the Thames side of the Tower, and so offers great views of the Tower Bridge (the famous bridge everyone always thinks is London Bridge). We passed the private water gate that the kings used to use to get into the keep, and that later was used to transport prisoners in to the Tower from the river.

We started our tour by touring the walls – I think it was the inner walls that we did, but I get a bit confused since you can see the Tower Bridge so easily from the walls. We got to look at the royal apartments for one of the early kings (I think it was Richard I), which were small and fairly basic. Deborah told us it would have been pretty well decorated and comfortable for the time. We then continued along the walls to another tower, where we got to see some very intricate graffiti that was carved by prisoners who were imprisoned in the Tower. Prisoners in the Tower were usually of high rank, and so while they were locked in the Tower, they were allowed access to the grounds during the day, and had fireplaces for warmth at night. Some of the highest ranking prisoners had small apartments where their families could visit or even stay. Many prisoners were locked up for years, but only twenty-three were killed in the actual Tower complex. It was more usual for executions to take place in public execution spots outside of the Tower. Anyway, some of the graffiti was of devotional aids to the Catholic priests who were locked in the Tower under Henry VIII and later Protestant monarchs.

We moved on to go see the Crown Jewels. I’m not sure if it was because it was January or because of the weather (it had rained some right at the start of our tour), but the Tower had almost no tourists in it. It was amazing to have the place more or less to ourselves. Along the way to see the Crown Jewels, we stopped briefly to see some of the Tower ravens. There are eight ravens who live at the Tower and have their wings clipped in a special way so that they can fly, but not high enough to leave the Tower complex. They have a Warder who is in charge of caring for them, and they seem to be pretty spoiled. A gilded cage, perhaps, but a huge one. There is a superstition that as long as there are ravens living at the Tower, the monarchy will not fall. So, there are always ravens living at the Tower.

The Crown Jewels are kept in the middle of the Tower in a very secure area. The corridors are long and snake around to handle the massive summer crowds; we could have walked right in. We did stop at the two small areas showing film of coronations so we could see the Crown Jewels in use, and see close-up footage of the various jewels. We then walked in to see the jewels themselves. The area also has collections of robes and swords and gold tableware and such that are used for state purposes. The jewels are very impressive, with hundreds of diamonds and precious stones and the largest diamond in the world in the scepter the monarch holds during the coronation ceremony. To me, the display of huge solid gold tableware that was after the crown jewels was just as impressive. Mer and I laughed that we cannot even put together a matching set of glasses for guests, let alone set out a solid gold punch bowl.

We finished our tour of the Tower in the White Tower, which houses a museum of arms and armor, including three sets of armor belonging to Henry VIII, including a set made when he was in his fifties and was very fat. The museum is excellent, and has several interactive areas, so it was hard to keep the group together and moving through this section. As I said, three hours is not enough to tour the Tower. The White Tower also has a small chapel in it that is one of my favorite chapels in Europe – it is very small, but seems filled with peace.

We finished our tour around 12:15 and said goodbye to Deborah. She had been a great guide, and I highly recommend her – you can reach her at http://www.tourist-guides.net/deborahcharles/ – if you are ever in London and want guide services, look her up.

We were to end our last day in London at St. Paul’s. We took the Tube to the St. Paul’s stop and let the kids have a thirty-minute break for lunch. After we had reconvened, we took a tour of St. Paul’s. St. Paul’s is a very impressive cathedral – it is huge and open-feeling and is an architectural marvel of harmony and scale. This is the fifth St. Paul’s to stand on the spot; the fourth one, which was even bigger, burned down in the Great Fire of 1066. Christopher Wren, who at the time was a forty-five-year-old math professor at Cambridge, was asked to help rebuild London, including St. Paul’s. Christopher Wren lived to an astonishing-for-the-time age of ninety, so he lived long enough to see St. Paul’s finished, and he is one of the few people actually buried in the cathedral.

Our tour was led by an older man named Peter who was utterly charming. He had a patient and thorough way of speaking, and he went out of his way to engage the students. He asked one of the students to find the center of the church, which the student was able to do as it is marked with a huge seal under the massive dome of St. Paul’s (the dome, by the way, is the second largest in the world, with only St. Peter’s in Rome being bigger). He found out we had some Latin scholars among us, and he made them translate the Latin written on the great seal under the dome – when translated, it says, in part, “If you seek his [Wren’s] memorial, look about you.” Wren knew he had built something special.

Peter took us to the Quire, where the choir sings from, and let us sit in it. From there, we could admire the elaborate and colorful murals that were installed by the Victorians. Peter also pointed out the wood carving in the Quire, which he informed us were carved by a great wood carver, and in Peter’s opinion are the greatest carvings in the world. He may be biased, but they are very impressive and ornate. Peter also told us that Wren used clear glass in the cathedral when he built it, but stained glass had been installed over time. Then, in World War II, a bomb fell through the roof over the altar and exploded. The concussion blew out all the glass of the church, most of which ended up being replaced by clear glass again. A new altar was carved from wood, based on drawings that Christopher Wren had left (Wren’s altar had never been built because of the expense).

Peter then took us behind the altar, where the British built a small chapel honoring the Americans who died defending Britain. It is a touching, quiet place. The altar rail has several dates carved in it, and Peter quizzed us on them – I forget some of them now, but they included the date the first St. Paul’s was built, the date of the Great Fire, the date the current St. Paul’s was started, the date of the founding of Jamestown, and the date of the American Revolution. Peter quipped that the British do not mind the revolution – they are pleased when their children grow up and do well. He also pointed out the elaborate carvings in the American Chapel, which are all of native birds and plants, except for one well-hidden carving, which Peter pointed out. The carvings were made in the 1950s during the Space Race, so behind one of the vines carved on the altar is an American rocket, headed to the stars.

We finished our tour with Peter by going down into the crypts, which are also very airy feeling. He showed us the graves of Wren, Lord Nelson, and the Duke of Wellington (who helped win at Waterloo). We finished next to models of the current St. Paul’s and the older St. Paul’s that had burned in the Great Fire. As I said, Peter was a great tour guide.

It was then about 3:00, and we had to be back at St. Paul’s for the evensong service at 5:00. So, we let the students have free time until 4:45. Most used it to stay and explore St. Paul’s, including climbing the stairs of the dome. I had to run our rented cell phones over to a post office, which was one Tube stop away. Having done that, I went back to St. Paul’s. I decided to try to climb the dome stairs myself. I have a fear of heights, so while I like climbing things, I often do not like the results. The first climb of 257 steps takes you to the Whispering Gallery, which overlooks the space under the dome. It is about 100 feet up, and the Whispering Gallery is mostly open – it is a circular rim around the inside of the dome, with an iron guardrail. It scares me, but to get to the next set of stairs, you have to cross the gallery to the other side. I managed this by keeping my head down, in the process walking right by Meredith and several students who felt bad for me. By the way, it is called the Whispering Gallery because you are supposed to be able to whisper something on one side of the dome and be able to hear it on the other. Our students tried it with mixed success – sometimes it worked and sometimes you could not hear over all the other people whispering.

I charged on up the next set of stairs, 376 steps total (from the ground). This took me to the Stone Gallery, about 175 feet up. I liked the Stone Gallery. It was a wide balcony around the base of the Great Dome. It had high stone guardrails, and I could stay back from them a good ten feet or more. I was able to relax and enjoy the views, such as I could see through the railings.

I eventually found the last set of stairs. These were hard. They were open spiral staircases between the inner dome (the one you can see inside) and the outer dome. It felt very exposed. I was scared and focused, so I missed a landing where you can look through a window from the top of the inner dome, all the way down to the great seal on the floor under the dome. I’m not too sad I missed that.

I got to the top of the stairs and saw what awaited me – a very tiny, unprotected circular balcony, 275 feet above the ground. I was terrified. I tried to turn around, but the people manning the door would not let me. The down stairs had to be used, and they were on the other side of the balcony. I would have to go out on the platform. I managed it because I had to and because I kept pressed up against the wall of the dome. People pretty much got out of my way – I think I looked pretty desperate. I got to the safety of the down-stairs door and fled inside. Next time, I’ll stop at the Stone Gallery.

Everyone met back up for the evensong service at 5:00. It lasted about an hour. It was very good, but I think I enjoyed Westminster’s evensong slightly better. The evensong choir at St. Paul’s was farther away than they had been at Westminster, so they were harder to hear. Also, they mostly sang in Latin, which was pretty but not intelligible to me. What was a good thing at St. Paul’s was that they had a short sermon, which is very unusual for an evensong service. It was excellent, too. It was honoring a Scottish woman, Mary Slessor, who had gone to Nigeria as a missionary in the late 1800s, where she was instrumental in promoting trade, establishing peace, and saving the lives of twins (who were believed to be cursed and were thus killed or abandoned at birth). The minister praised Mary for her willingness to go at a time when single women were not encouraged to go, and he used her as an example to all of us, as we should be willing to go and serve Jesus wherever we are and wherever we are called. It was an excellent exhortation.

The evensong service wrapped up about 6:00, and we let the kids have the last of their free time. They had to be back at the hotel by 9:00, and so they went their separate ways. Mer and I went to a burger place and ate there, then went back to the hotel. By happy luck, we ended up on the same train as three of our girls who were going back to the hotel early. So, we had company for the trip back. We got to the hotel about 7:30, but then Mer and I decided we needed dessert, so we ran back out to a store to pick up several Cadbury candy bars. We munched on those while we waited for everyone else to check in. Everyone did make it by 9:00, although several of the students seemed a bit winded. We found out later that some of them had even run. When one student asked why they were running, the others responded that they “did not want the Riordans to worry.” That was very touching to me and Meredith. What a great group. We do need to stress in the future that we would rather they not run so as to be safe, but it was still touching.

I did not get full details of what the various groups did, but I know one group went back to Trafalgar Square, and another went back to Oxford Street to go back to the huge toy store. It sounds as if they all had a good last evening in London. We encouraged the students to get to bed since we had to be up by 4:15 am to leave at 5:00. Mer and I were asleep (or at least in bed – sleep was sporadic) around 9:45.

On Monday, we started out from the hotel and caught the DLR and then the Tube to go to the British Museum. We met Deborah there, where she took us on a two-hour tour, from about 10:15 to about 12:15. It is ridiculous to try to see the British Museum in two hours, so Deborah took us to several specific exhibits, and we tried to remind the students that this was a survey of sorts; they could (and should) come back another time and try to see more.

Deborah took us around the museum in an efficient walking path which saved time, but took us out of chronological order. So, we started the tour with a couple of Medieval treasure hordes; one was a chest of gold coins worth about $500,000 in today’s money. It had probably been buried during the Wars of the Roses to keep it safe, and was never retrieved. The other horde we looked at was a bunch of chess pieces found in a cave, probably left by a Norwegian trader who was never able to come back for them.

We then moved back in time to the early Anglo-Saxons of Britain. We looked at a horde found as part of an inland ship burial of a king. There were lots of armor pieces and some decorative pieces, as well as some money found at the site.

After the Anglo-Saxons, we moved on to Roman Britain, with some very rare samples of letters written on birch bark, as well as some gold, silver, and bronze necklaces and other decorative items. This was followed by looking at ancient Egypt, focusing mostly on mummies and sarcophagi. We then got to see the Rosetta Stone, which is famous because it had inscriptions in three languages: hieroglyphics, Coptic, and Greek. The Stone let scholars finally decipher hieroglyphics, which no one could read until the Stone was found in the mid-1800s. We then moved on to the Elgin Marbles, which are the very detailed carved marble friezes that used to be at the top of the Parthenon in Greece, but were bought by a British collector in the late 1800s and moved to the museum. Some of the carvings are amazingly detailed and could pass for sculpture from the 1600s or even later.

We finished our tour by going into a very pretty large room that houses many books and other oddities from the collection of a doctor whose personal collection started the British Museum. As an aside, he was also the person who thought to make bitter cocoa into a tasty beverage by adding sugar and warm milk, so many of us felt very kindly toward the doctor for inventing hot chocolate.

We said goodbye to Deborah for the time being, and caught the Tube to the British Library. We did not have much time once we got there, so we encouraged the kids to grab something quick to eat at the cafe; they only had about fifteen minutes to eat. We met up with the first of two tour guides we would have at the Library, an infectiously enthusiastic woman named Aviva. She laughed a lot, and she took us into the Treasures Room of the Library, where they display some of the unique or rare items. We got to see two copies (of four remaining) of the Magna Carta, and we got to see two of the three oldest complete New Testaments (from about 300 AD). There were some old illustrated manuscripts and some fragments of very old copies of books of the New Testament (from before 100 AD).

We got to see the handwritten notes for songs from the Beatles. There was an entire display case dedicated to Alice in Wonderland, including some handwritten journals and a version of Alice with illustrations by Salvador Dali. There were cases with notes or early editions of Chaucer, Austen, Bronte and others. It was a book-nerd paradise. The Treasures Tour took about an hour, and then we met a guide who took us on a general tour of the Library. He pointed out the King’s Collection from George III, which is required to be publicly displayed, and he told us the Library is the third largest library in the world, after a library in Russia and the Library of Congress. We were shown a model of the library and how it resembles a large ship from one angle (it really does). Finally, we were shown a film on how books get from storage to a patron, a process of moving books along a conveyor that takes about an hour. The kids were clearly getting tired after being on their feet for so much of the day, but they hung in there.

After the Library, we took the Tube back to the theatre district, and with much consulting of maps and some considerable student aid, we found the St. Martin’s Theatre, where we were to see a production of The Mousetrap, by Agatha Christie. We still had over ninety minutes until we needed to meet for the show, so we let everyone go to supper. Five students stuck with me and Meredith, and we ended up at a very good Italian restaurant in a large basement several blocks from the theater. It was fun to eat with the students. They all left right after supper, but Mer and I lingered to get dessert.

We all met up at the theater at 6:45, and got into the theater shortly thereafter. St Martin’s is a small theater, and since it was a Monday in January, the theater was only about one-third full. That was not all bad as it let several of us spread out from our original seats and gave us more room. The Mousetrap has been playing for well over fifty years, and we were seeing the 24,219th showing of the play. One funny (to us) story – one student saw a picture of the fiftieth anniversary celebration and jokingly identified the older woman at the center as Miss Marple. I corrected him quietly and told him to never make fun of Her Majesty the Queen when in England. He was chagrined – he really had not realized it was Queen Elizabeth.

Anyway, The Mousetrap was much fun. It was funny and fluffy and still engaging while we all tried to figure out who done it. The characters were colorful, especially the young man named Christopher Wren (named for the architect). Most of us failed to figure things out, and the kids loved it. We were asked not to reveal the ending, so you will have to go see it yourself.

We headed back to the Tube in a light rain, and got back to the hotel at about 10:30. It was the last of the very late days for the trip, but we still had another full day of touring to go.

On Sunday, we left the hotel at about 8:00 because we had 9:12 train tickets to Cambridge. Cambridge is a famous university town in England, with the second oldest university in the country (after Oxford). It is a bigger city than I had thought, with a population of about 100,000.

King’s Cross was not difficult to navigate, having “only” ten platforms. Our Harry Potter fans were excited because Platform 9-3/4 is where Harry is supposed to catch his train to school in the books. We assured them that we would make sure they got pictures when we got back, since we were pressed for time.

We got on our train with only a few minutes to spare, to the dismay of a bladder or two. Still, the rail journey was less than an hour, so no one suffered greatly. I was very happy to see London and then the very pretty English countryside roll by – I like train travel in Europe very much since you get to see so much of the country. Several of the students remarked on the countryside as well, but I’m afraid two insane tour guides with their maddening pace, when combined with a gently rocking train, drove several of our students to slumber.

We got to Cambridge a little after 10:00, and by 10:30 we had everyone out of the bathrooms and we were underway. It is supposed to be about a twenty-five-minute walk from the train station to the centre of town, and I was pretty sure we could easily beat that at my pace. I saw a sign to the town centre, and followed it to the right. It turns out that the sign meant the next right at the next road, and not the pedestrian path we found. Mer asked a woman for directions, and she told us to follow the bike trail, which we did. This wound all over, through residential neighborhoods and through a park, and disappeared on us once in awhile. We did finally find Market Square, but it had taken about thirty minutes, and so the kids only had about twenty minutes to find a quick (and early) lunch. I struck out and bought some Cornish pasties, a meat-and-potato-filled pastry that coal miners used to eat in Cornwall. It was the first one I had ever had, and it was very good. I also struck up a conversation with the young woman who was selling the pasties; she saw I had a dollar bill in my passport pouch, so she asked about where she should go in the United States. After chatting for about ten minutes, we came to the conclusion that she should visit Vermont. It was a very pleasant conversation.

Everyone met back up in front of the Guild Hall as agreed upon, and our walking guide met us just a few minutes early. She was a woman named Honor, and she was probably in her late fifties, with longer silver hair. She was very friendly, and she very kindly waited for all of us to finish eating before starting the tour.

A word about Cambridge University – it is one university, but is made up of many colleges. A college in this case is a building or buildings that group students together. It sounds as if it is like the “house system” of the Harry Potter series or somewhat like a fraternity. The various colleges all make up the University, but have intra-college rivalries and sports and the like. Each college seems to have its own grounds and chapels, but some are much more splendid than other. The colleges dominate much of the older section of Cambridge, and the walking tour focused mostly on the colleges, especially King’s College and Trinity College.

King’s College and Trinity College are both very large and beautiful, with Trinity having more grounds but King’s having the very famous King’s College Chapel. Chapel is a laughable word for the the church of King’s College – it rivals anything I have seen anywhere. It may be smaller than Westminster and St. Paul’s, but it is still enormous and very ornate and splendid. The walls of the church are almost all stained glass, with New Testament stories on the bottom row of windows, and corresponding Old Testament stories on top. The ceiling was very ornate, with a fan-shaped pattern repeated throughout the church.

After spending the time in King’s College Chapel, we walked over toward Trinity College. Trinity College is undergoing some construction, so the front gate was closed, but Honor took us to the back gate, which was, happily for us, open. We walked onto the grounds, and wandered there for some time. The grounds were beautiful – the town’s river, the Cam, runs through the grounds, and despite the cold weather, there appeared to be a kayak race in process, as well as several punts (flat-bottomed boats) on the river, with blanketed tourists huddled in them. We could see the outside of the Wren Library, Trinity’s library build by Christoper Wren of St. Paul’s fame, but we could not go in – it was closed. Still, it was a very pretty place to stand in the sun and look around.

We then proceeded back to Market Square, where our tour had begun. We still had about three-and-a-half hours left until we had to get to our train, so we let the kids go (in groups of three or more) to have free time. Everyone scattered to do their own thing, and Mer and I headed off to Cambridge’s local museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Fitzwilliam Museum is an eclectic museum. It has art and armor and everything in between. It is fairly extensive, and we only saw a small part. We rested for a few minutes in the museum cafe while I had a hot chocolate, and then we looked at a room full of decorative folding fans from the last one hundred years or so. Some of them were very pretty. We moved quickly through a room of armor to get to a room full of illustrated manuscripts, as well as some examples of early coins from England. We ended our visit there since we still wanted to eat supper, but even those exhibits took over an hour.

We headed back toward the square, and after hunting around for awhile decided to eat at The Eagle pub. In addition to having pretty good pub food, it is the pub where Crick and Watson are supposed to have announced they had discovered the structure of DNA. So, it seemed a worthwhile stop. After supper, we wandered to a local bakery to have some pastries, and that filled out our free time.

We met the students back in front of the Guild Hall by the market, and then we headed off in the direction of the train station. This time, there were signs to the station, so we made it in an efficient manner, taking about twenty or twenty-five minutes to get there. The train ride back took a little longer since we were not on a direct Cambridge-to-London line, so we stopped at several stations along the way. Once we got back to King’s Cross station, I asked around and we found Platform 9-3/4, the mock-up of the platform from the Harry Potter books. Most of our kids have grown up on Harry Potter, and so they were very excited to have their pictures taken there. It was fun.

We headed back to the hotel, where we got in at the very reasonable hour of 9:00. Mer and I encouraged everyone to get some rest. Many took our advice, but we did hear later that some stayed up late. Still, everyone stayed positive throughout the trip, so a few late nights must have been okay.

On Saturday we left the hotel at about 9:15 and jumped back on the DLR and then the Tube to the Westminster stop. We came out of the Tube right in front of the Houses of Parliament, and it was quite a sight. We were again fortunate with the weather – we got rained on by one cloud getting to the DLR, and then it stopped raining, and the sun even came out some later in the day.

We headed away from Westminster Bridge and made our way the several blocks to the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum. The War Rooms were the bunker where Churchill and the War Cabinet ran the British war effort during World War 2. The War Rooms were largely shut up after the war, and were re-opened as a museum during the eighties, with original furniture and layouts based on photographs. They even found some sugar cubes from one officer’s sugar ration in a desk drawer. It is a fascinating place.

We got into the museum at about 10:15 and started with a short five-minute film about the War Rooms that used original film footage of the war. Then, we were given audio guides and left to explore the War Rooms at our own pace. Our group spread out as we went along a different rates, but that was just fine. It is amazing how cramped the space was and how much of a secret the War Rooms were (the engineers even managed to reinforce the bunker/basement with steel and two to six feet of concrete with no one on the street ever knowing about it). It is an impressive display of how determined the British were to win the war.

After the self-guided tour of the War Rooms, we let the students have about ninety minutes of free time in the museum to look in the very interesting gift shop or to go back in to the War Rooms to explore the Churchill Museum, which is a museum dedicated to Winston Churchill’s entire life. They even have a huge computerized table where you can look up various days from Churchill’s birth to his death. They have lots of original speeches and films and pictures and some interactive displays. It is very easy to spend an hour or two in the museum, and all of our kids at least checked it out.

We left the War Rooms at about 12:30 and made our way back to Westminster Abbey, where we met up with our Blue Badge guide, Deborah, at about 1:00. She led us into a special group tour entrance. Along the way we saw some schoolboys and girls in full uniform going to class…on a Saturday. No more whinging about the dress code at CVCA! Anyway, Deborah took us in through the courtyard where the abbey monks would have worked and from where they would come into the church. Westminster is a very crowded church because it is full of monuments and tombs dating back almost one thousand years. As such, there are very specific places that tours can stop. Deborah took us through the church, and showed us many things, including:

– The coronation chair that has been used since before 1060, which has some graffiti carved into it from the schoolboys of the 1800s
– A tomb of a very rich man who basically bought his way into being buried at the Abbey
– The great altar
– Edward the Confessor’s tomb (he died in 1065, although the tomb is slightly later)
– Queen Elizabeth I’s and Mary Queen of Scots’ tombs
– The seats where the Knights of the Bath sit for special ceremonies
– Musicians’ Alley and Poets’ Corner, where famous musicians and poets are buried or remembered
– The old treasury with its double doors and six separate locks

Deborah also told us about Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation back in the early 1950s, with some indication that we would probably see one in our lifetime since the current queen is in her eighties. Deborah finished our tour at 2:30 by leading us out of the Abbey and showing us the Methodist Centre, where we could use the cafe and the bathrooms before heading back to the Abbey for an Evensong service that started at 3:00.

The Evensong service was beautiful, and it was good to take some time to worship God – I had not realized how starved I was getting spiritually. We sat just before the great altar on our right, and the choir sat to our left in the Quire, and we faced a huge stained glass window that was very pretty. Evensong services are formal, and the choir did all of the singing except the final hymn. The Scripture readings were from Isaiah and from Titus, and a Psalm was sung by the choir. Prayers were scripted, with the officiant praying most of the time with us, the congregation, responding by reading our parts from cards. The acoustics were amazing, and the choir this afternoon was a small group of men whose voices rang in the church for several seconds after they stopped singing. It was an incredible experience. The service lasted for about an hour.

Early during the service, one of our friends from back home in Ohio came in by prior arrangement. Zac and his wife, Erica, live about an hour outside of London, and they came into the city to see us. With Zac and Erica was Erica’s sister Inga. We were able to meet up right after the service, and it was great to see them. The kids took it all in stride, as if meeting people from Ohio in London happens all the time.

We left the church and gave the kids about fifteen minutes in the church gift shop. It seemed strange to some of them that a church would have a gift shop, but the huge churches are expensive to keep up, so there is the shop. Several managed to find some very cool things in there.

We all jumped on the Tube, and in a moment of impulse, we took the Jubilee Line, which is the newest Tube line, and one that most of us had not been on. We needed to get to St. Paul’s on the Central Line, and the Jubilee connected to the Central Line. The Jubilee Line was very crowded, but we managed to get on with no real difficulty, and we got off at Oxford Street to change lines, only to discover that the Central Line train at that station was not running. Not a great thing, but we all figured we could walk to the next station, so we did just that.

We came up on Oxford Street. Oxford Street is the busiest shopping street in all of London, and 97.3% of all of Europe was there this evening. We struggled along as best we could for the several blocks to the next Underground station, only to discover that the Central Line was offline there as well. I conferred with Zac and Erica and Meredith, and we decided to walk two more blocks to a bus station to get a city bus. We made our way through the throngs, and jumped on a bus that we thought was supposed to go to St. Paul’s. We just weren’t sure what the street or stop would be called. The kids seemed to like that we were on an “expand-o” bus with a flexible middle, where several of us stood for the ride. Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, I saw the St. Paul’s tube station. And we zoomed right on past. We tumbled out two blocks later at the next bus stop, and happily made our way down quieter streets. I was happy, anyway – after the crowds of Oxford Street, I’m afraid I went into full-stride mode. I’m six feet tall and a marathon runner, so my full-stride mode may not have been a happy thing for some of the students. They all managed, though.

We told the students to all meet us in front of St. Paul’s by 6:45, which gave them about an hour and a half to find a place to eat. Some students asked me if I knew of a pub where they could eat, so I told them of one I remembered from my previous visit from two years ago. They headed off. Zac and Erica and Inga seemed to like the idea of pub grub, so we went there too. After we got seated, another group of our students came in – they had followed us there figuring we might have a good idea of where to eat. So, twelve of us all ended up at the Knightrider pub.

We had a great time visiting with Zac and Erica. Inga was pretty quiet, which is understandable since we all had just met. The food was cheap and pretty good, and Mer was able to order a huge portion of fish and chips, which she declared to be quite good. After supper, we went back to St. Paul’s, where we met up with the students, all of them being on time. At this point, Zac and Erica and Inga took their leave. Erica is several months pregnant and did not want to overdo it. It was great of them to make the effort to come into London, and it was great the kids welcomed them into our little group.

We finished the evening off by heading over to the St. Paul’s Tube stop and meeting up with Andrew, a London Walks guide. He was going to walk us around The City, which is the oldest part of London and used to be the entire city of London. The focus of the talk was on Shakespeare and Dickens, with a bit more emphasis on Dickens since modern scholars know more about Dickens.

It was really cool to walk around The City at night on a Saturday. During the week, 350,000 people work in The City, but only 7,000 people live there. As such, the place was practically deserted; it felt as if we had this whole place to ourselves. The walk started at about 7:00 and went for about an hour and a half. It was cold, but dry, and we kept moving. Some things that Andrew pointed out were:

– The alleyway and back part of a house where some of the book Martin Chuzzlewit was set
– The guildhall where Dickens said he walked to as a child, tiring him out such that he fell asleep at the feet of one of two statues of giants
– A bust of Shakespeare commemorating two of his friends publishing his complete plays in the First Folio
– The remains of a Roman wall near a house where we know Shakespeare lived for a time
– A meat market where parts of Oliver Twist took place, along with the square where executions took place
– A medieval church that is still standing (although part of it was torn down a long time ago), and that many movies have used, including Shakespeare in Love and The King’s Speech
– We bumped into the verger of the church, and he recognized Andy, and he showed us photos of the films that took place in the church, which he had on hand (he must have seen us coming; it was very kind of him)
– A gate dating back to Shakespeare’s time where his plays had to be brought to be approved by the office of the Master of the Revels
– Andy pointed out a few more places that Dickens used in stories, without us actually walking down to them

It was a very good tour, and it was great to see such a large chunk of The City while it was so quiet. Andy walked us to the nearest Tube stop, which was a closed Central line stop (it was nice to see the closings can confuse Londoners too). He then walked us to the next stop, and we caught our train to the DLR, and thus to home. We got back at about 9:30. We urged the students to get to bed to make good use of the early evening, and then took our own advice.

There will somewhat be a lack of student tales and pictures for today, because today was free time for everyone. As long as students stayed in groups of three or more, they were free to go anywhere they wanted. Oddly, none of the students stayed with us. We were all to meet near Piccadilly Circus at the Queen’s Theatre, where we were to see Les Mis in the evening.

Everyone took the opportunity to sleep in until around 9:00 or so, including the tour leaders. We all needed the sleep. Then, the students headed off in three different groups, while Mer and I went back to the room so I could blog and she could write up notes for any future trips. As such, we did not get out of the hotel until around 12:00.

The students, meanwhile, went all over the place. One group went to see the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street, but they decided to just look in the gift shop. They then went and found Abbey Road of Beatles fame, and then went back to the Globe Theatre to revisit the gift shop. The walked across the modern London Bridge to St. Paul’s, where they caught the Tube to the theatre. Somewhere in the mix they found time to go to a huge and old toy store on Oxford Street, London’s main shopping street.

A second group went shopping on Oxford Street, then found their way to Kensington Palace and gardens. They had lunch at a fish-and-chips shop, and they wrapped up the day with a visit to the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

The third group went to Buckingham Palace and then went to Oxford Street to go to the big toy store as well. It was funny to me and Meredith that all the kids ended up on Oxford Street and many went to the toy store. It sounds as if everyone did very well.

As for me and Meredith, we headed back to the Westminster stop on the Tube (near Parliament and the Eye), and we walked back along the river eastward to the Embankment Tube stop, where we were to meet a guide for the Sherlock Holmes walking tour. We were excited about the walking tour; we thought we could include similar tours for future trips if the tour was any good. We got there early, so we used the time to cross over the Jubilee Bridge, which is actually two pedestrian bridges, one on each side of a major railway bridge. The bridges are pretty, and one bridge has amazing eastward views of the Thames, and one bridge has amazing views westward. We walked across the eastward bridge and then returned via the westward one.

We still had time, so we wandered in a park near the station. It was very pretty, and there were a ton (or tonne) of monuments in the park. Two that were interesting to us were a statue of Robert Burns, the Scottish playwright, and another of a man who started Sunday Schools in England, although I am afraid I have forgotten his name.

We got back to the Tube stop in time to pick up our tour. Although it had been raining earlier in the day, the rain had stopped by the time we left the hotel and the sun was even starting to break through. We were very grateful for that. People in Maine and Ohio joke about the weather changing all the time, but neither one has anything on London. It rained in the morning, cleared up, started raining toward the end of our walk, stopped briefly, started up again, and then finally stopped while we were wandering around near the theater after dinner. On the whole, we have been very fortunate with the weather.

Our tour guide was a very British lady in her early sixties. She was quite slight, but had a huge presence and had no problem projecting or in keeping our group in tow along the two-hour walk. She is also an actor, so that helps explain her being rather good at her tour. Our group was about eighteen in number, but Mer and I never had any trouble hearing. The group was mostly Americans, with a college-aged school group along making up about eight of us. They were well behaved, although one girl did put in ear buds to listen to music along the tour, which made me very proud of our kids; they would not do something like that, and I was a little sad the girl did that. Her loss.

The tour turned out to be excellent, and this was apparent from within a few minutes of the start of the tour. Our guide was very witty and knowledgeable, but was not ashamed to ask for help from the horde of Holmes fans if someone asked a question she could not answer. The tour was Holmes-based in that our guide pointed out sights that were mentioned in the Holmes stories, but she also pointed out other facts along the way. We were shown some non-Holmes sights such as the former edge of the Thames (it is much deeper and narrower than it was in Conan Doyle’s day) and we were shown the church where Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins meet in Pygmalion and My Fair Lady. That was very cool, since Mer teaches the first, and the second is CVCA’s spring musical this year.

Back to Holmes. We got to see some Victorian-era doorways with their torch-snuffers out front. We saw several hotels and restaurants mentioned in the stories, and we got to see Charing Cross Station and Charing Cross Hospital, which are both very important in Holmes’ world. We wandered up two narrow and still gas-lit alleyways (those were great). We got to see the London Opera House, where Holmes would go to relax. We got to see Covent Garden (where Eliza sold flowers), where Holmes and Watson tracked down where a gem-containing goose had been sold in The Blue Carbuncle. We ended up in Trafalgar Square at the Sherlock Holmes pub, where they have a mock-up of Holmes’ study. All along the way we got to see a pretty large section of the greater area of London (Westminster) around Charing Cross and Covent Garden. Walking in cities is a wonderful way to get to see them, and a focused tour like this one was very worthwhile. It was so worthwhile that we took a chance later during supper to call the London Walks company and see if we could book a tour for Saturday evening. It seemed a long shot, but the woman I talked to was very helpful and made some phone calls to guides. We had mentioned we were interested in Literary London, so she arranged a tour of London (the City – the square mile of the original city) focusing on Shakespeare and Dickens. We are very excited about that.

After the tour, we headed over to Piccadilly Circus and walked to our theatre to make sure we knew where it was. We found it with no problems (the signs are hard to miss). It was about 4:30, and we did not have to meet the kids until 6:30, so we walked across the street to Chinatown. London’s Chinatown is very small (only one block with scattered shops in the blocks around the main block), but seems to be authentic. The names of many of the restaurants are less authentic – Mer and I had an excellent meal in the Top of the Town restaurant.

After supper, Mer and I wandered around the area, including a hasty retreat from a turn into a red-light district. We were looking for dessert, especially if we could find a French bakery. We never found one, but settled on a couple of British candy bars, which were enjoyable.

We started to run into groups of the kids in the theatre area. It seems as if most or even all of them ate in Chinatown. All the students were there by 6:30, as we had asked. The show did not start until 7:30, so we released everyone again to wander until 7:00. Mer and I joined a group of five students in a coffee house, where we chatted about what they had done for the day.

Everyone was back in time for the show. The theatre was very nice inside, and we had pretty good seats, about half-way back in the first balcony. Balcony seats are great for big musicals because you can see the sweep of the entire stage, and musicals do not get any bigger than Les Mis. Happily, we were all seated together, so that was nice. I got to chatting with the British man next to me. He turned out to be a Christan (he identifued himself as such after Mer explained we were with CVCA), and was there with his extended family for a birthday celebration for his father. He was very kind, and it was good to have a chance to talk with a native Brit.

Les Mis lived up to itself yet again. This production has been running in London for twenty-five years. If you are not familiar with Les Mis, it is probably the biggest of the big-budget huge musicals that the eighties and nineties produced. It is based on the novel by French author Victor Hugo, and the basic story is about an ex-criminal who turns his life around after being shown love and kindness by a bishop. The ex-criminal, Jean Valjean, cannot seem to shake his past as he is perused by a relentless police detective, Javert. Along the way, Jean Valjean adopts the daughter of a dying woman, and so there can be a love interest between the daughter and a young man later in the book/play. It sounds a bit complicated, but it is a long book and a sweeping musical.

The set and costuming and music were all excellent. The makeup people did a great job of aging the two primary men as the years went by in the play. The famous barricade scene was especially well thought out, with the young men dying in slow motion and being scattered dramatically all over the stage. The part of Eponine, another girl in the play, was played by the understudy, and she was wonderful – she played a loyal, touching and tragic part and sang with feeling. The real musical star of the play, for me, was Javert, the police inspector. He had a huge and full baritone voice that was amazing to hear.

The end of the play is very touching, and left me misty, and Mer cried a bit. Many of the girls seemed a bit red-eyed as well. I think they enjoyed it; I know Mer and I had a great time. Literary London continues to delight us.

We got back home without any trouble, around 11:30 or so.

Day three in London was another busy day, with us leaving the hotel around 9:15 and getting back around 11:00. It involved less walking than on Wednesday, but involved a lot of standing. Plus, as we headed out, it was a “soft” day, as the Irish say: it was raining lightly. Still, we expected it to rain some, and it was a largely indoor kind of day, so that all worked out fine.

We did our first three-line Tube journey, where we changed from the DLR line to the District line to the Northern line, and that went well. We got off the Tube at Charing Cross station, and proceeded to get up to the street, right next to Trafalgar Square.

Trafalgar Square is a huge square that celebrates Admiral Lord Nelson’s naval victory at Trafalgar, and the square is very impressive. Despite the rain, the kids were game souls and let me take a picture of them in the square, in the rain. We then headed over to the National Gallery, London’s main art museum. I’m afraid I left everyone hanging for a while – I needed to pay for our tour bill, but it took about 25 minutes for me to take care of that. In retrospect, I wish I had let everyone go tour while I took care of that. Mistakes do happen on these tours. As it was, the kids had about 20 minutes to explore the museum or to look in the gift shop before our tour started.

  We met up with our tour leader in the Education Centre of the museum, and she was great. She actually tried to get to know all of the kids’ names, and she largely succeeded. She took us into a room of the museum, and asked us the purpose of art. Oddly, our normally academic and outgoing students suddenly were shy. The were willing to answer questions when called on, but were a bit timid about answering on their own. It was a bit strange, since they are so gifted at, well, being smart. Anyway, our guide, Gayna, talked about how art shows us perceptions from a time in history, and can speak to us today through the similarities and differences. She also talked about how art can really make you see the world differently through heightening awareness of color, horizon, detail, and such. She told us that art was like music – some of it would resonate for us and some of it would not. It was a good introduction.

Gayna then took us to see four paintings. I had asked for a tour about religion and art, and Gayna also found out that we had a few Latin scholars along, so she showed us three Christian paintings and one painting from Greek mythology. She showed us how perspective developed over time and how that changed the paintings, and she talked about symbolism and how the symbols changed depending on if a painting was Christian or not. For instance, we found out that saints are identified by objects they carry (St. Catherine carries a wheel because she died on a torture wheel), and that saints who were martyred often carry green feathers. We found out that a peacock in Christian paintings represents the all-seeing nature of God and that in mythological paintings it represents the queen of the gods, Hera (or Juno). It was a very interesting and informative tour, and spending one hour on four paintings may seem like a lot, but it did not feel slow at all.

  After the tour finished at 12:00, we let the kids go for free time and lunch until 1:50, when our next tour would begin. I recommended checking out one of my favorite churches, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and we informed them that they could eat in the cafeteria of St. Martin’s, which happens to be in the crypt. The kids who took us up on that reported that they liked the food and seeing the church, but there were a couple of cross-cultural moments that make travel fun: one student was surprised to be asked if he wanted mustard and applesauce on his ham sandwich, and another student slathered on a ton of mustard that turned out to contain a lot of something that was spicy. Mer and I went in to St. Martin’s and sat for awhile. I prayed a little, and also filled out an evaluation form for the National Gallery tour. It was very peaceful. Mer and I finished our lunchtime by spending about 45 minutes touring some of the greatest Renaissance paintings in the National Gallery. We were very pleased to find out later that many students had gone back in to the Gallery after they had eaten lunch.

We met up with our Blue Badge tour guide, Deborah. Blue Badge guides are professional guides, and Deborah will end up being our guide for four different sights. Deborah started by showing us the National Portrait Gallery, which is made up of portraits (mostly paintings, with a few sculptures) of people who were important to Great Britain. Deborah took us to the very start of the paintings, the earliest kings, from the late 15th century. She then walked us through the not-always-easy-to-follow succession of the crown. The blur of names and dates was a lot for me, but helped Meredith solidify her knowledge of the crown, which she uses for her English literature sections of her classes. A few things I remember: King Henry the Eighth stayed with his first wife for 24 years before breaking away from the church in Rome so he could divorce her so he could try to have a son. Also, after Henry VIII it was not a very good idea to name you child Henry because he inevitably died before he could take the throne. And, Parliament kept ignoring the rules of royal succession in order to keep a Protestant monarch on the throne. Lastly, Elizabeth and Victoria reigned for such a long time they had eras named for them.

The tour lasted two hours, and it was very good. In the future, if we get to do this again, we may shorten the tour to 60 or 90 minutes so the kids can have time to explore. We said goodbye to Deborah for the time being, and we made our way outside, where, to our delight, it had stopped raining. Since it was not raining, we let the kids have 15 or 20 minutes to explore Trafalgar Square and to take pictures. They had a grand time doing that – lots of pictures and clambering about on the monuments for poses and better pictures and the like. It was a lot of fun, and I laughed a lot.

We then jumped back on the Tube to the Chalk House station, where we found the Roundhouse Theatre (with the unsolicited and welcome help of a friendly British man). We gave the kids an hour and a half to go get supper anywhere they liked, and Mer and I headed off with some students in tow to go find a pub I wanted to eat in. We found it, but the students could not find enough seats for all of them, so they left to try other places. Later we heard they found a restaurant that offered foods from all over the world and they liked it. I was pleased with the pub – it was full of locals, the bartender was very friendly and helpful, the food was good; the chips (French fries) were the best I have ever had, and when I ordered a Sprite, I was asked, “Half-pint or pint?” I was delighted to actually get to order a pint from an English pub. It made me smile.

We all met back up at the Roundhouse Theatre on time. We were there to see a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Julius Caesar. It started at 7:15, and we all had good seats for the production, although we were in two groups, since they had not been able to seat fifteen people together. The theater had good sight-lines, with the stage being a thrust stage with seats on three sides.

The stage was usually bare, with the scenery being set by projected computer images: a large image on a big screen, and images of vaguely-shaped people on smaller screens on the stage that represented the crowds of Rome or the armies later in the play.

The play was strongly acted. I loved the actor playing Caesar from the start, and although I was unsure of Brutus and Marc Antony at first, they quickly grew on me. Cassius, the major ally of Brutus, was also excellent, and he actually became quite a sympathetic character. Marc Antony’s speech to the crowds of Rome after Caesar’s death was magnificent to see in all of its subtle and not-so-subtle manipulation.

I struggled with the play a little at the first because I was so tired that I was having trouble staying awake. I finally woke up fully after taking off my outer shirts, but the initial drowsiness did create a bit of disconnect with the play for me that took a little time to get over. Once I caught back up, I enjoyed the play very much.

One of the very cool things they did in the play included starting the play off by sprinkling rose petals all over the stage. The text can call for this since one of the players talks about spreading flowers before Caesar, but it struck me as a bit odd, since it was all over the stage and left there for the entire play. It all made sense, though, when Caesar was killed – it then appeared as if the entire stage was coated in blood, and it looked the same for the battles later on in the play.

It is not always easy to follow Shakespeare, especially when you are pretty tired from being toured all over London by two half-crazed leaders. However, the kids seemed to track with the play and even had some thoughts on the staging they had seen, including informing me and Meredith that the play would have opened with the Feast of the Lupercal, which we had not known, but would have explained the wolf symbols used at the opening.

We got back home efficiently thanks to a moment I was delighted in – two students suggested a way home that made better sense than what I had been thinking of. They were picking up on how to read the Tube map, and that was gratifying. We got home about 11:30, and let everyone know they could sleep in on Friday if they wished. I think we all wished for that.