It is mostly a great thing to be in a country where you speak the local language. It makes touring much easier. Since it makes touring much easier, it means people can strike off on their own, which Mer and I encourage. But it does mean that people have different experiences. Such it was today. Neuf and Shelby were already gone by the time Mer and I went upstairs to go around 9:00. Brianna decided to hang with us today.

Not only did Neuf and Shelby head off on their own, but they also did not stick together for long, each going to see different things. They started together at Buckingham Palace, but then Neuf had a ticket to tour Westminster Abbey. So their days looked like:

Neuf: Neuf went from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey, then back to the palace. She caught Platform 9 3/4 (of Harry Potter fame) at King’s Cross Station before heading over to the British Library. She then texted and joined Shelby at the British Museum.

Shelby: Shelby started at the palace with Neuf, then toured the Queen’s Collection – an art exhibit focusing on royal portraits of Russian and British families. She then spent the rest of the day in the British Museum, where she managed to get to every single room in the entire museum, which is really impressive. Neuf joined her toward the end of the day.

That left me and Meredith and Brianna. We headed back to Covent Garden to get breakfast. We took a detour into St. Paul’s church (not cathedral). We had intended to walk through it to get to the market area, but the gates to the main square were closed. So we were stuck in the church and churchyard, which was not a bad thing at all. The churchyard had a striking statue of the conversion of St. Paul done around 2010, with Paul looking very young and very Roman. It worked, with the sculptor catching the instant by having the horse rear and Paul fling his arm up over his eyes – it was all quite dynamic. On the far side of the church was a small brick maze that led to a portrait of the queen, so I did the maze path for fun.

St. Paul’s is known as “the actor’s church,” and the inside is filled with dedications and memorials to actors. To drive home the point, the first sign we saw inside the lobby of the church was a directional sign to Hamlet auditions. We had not prepared a monologue, so we just went into the church, which is simple and elegant inside.

After a picture stop outside the church and one of Meredith posing with a flower cart (since she is teaching Pygmalion right now at school, which takes place here), we made it to the market. Our first-choice place was closed, but we had a good breakfast in a cute restaurant across the way.

After breakfast, we jumped on the Tube, the London subway, and took it to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I knew nothing about the museum, other than that Mer had said it was eclectic. I thought it would be a small museum filled with some decorative art. Um. No. It was a ginormous huge big museum, filled with pretty much anything that had any tie-in to a decoration. They have sculptures and silver and gold and paintings and fabrics and glass and architectural models and costumes and tapestries. They have Roman things, and early Christian objects, and Islamic and Buddhist art. They have some Donatello works, and Turner and Michelangelo and Rodin. It is an incredible museum. We ended up being there until 5:00 pm.

We walked in from the Tube – the museum has its own Tube tunnel access, and we walked into one of the sculpture galleries, where I was greeted by over a dozen Rodin statues. Welcome to the Victoria and Albert Museum! We caught a free guided tour that walked us through several of the most important Medieval and Renaissance works, which mostly focused on religious objects. We got to see a sculpture of Samson killing a Philistine; it was special for only having a few contact points on the ground. We saw a few works of Mary and Jesus and saw how the style changed over the years. The tour included a couple of ornate saint bone boxes (reliquaries), including one that had been associated with St. Thomas Becket (an English bishop murdered by four knights who thought they were doing the king a favor).

After the tour, we ran into a docent who recommended a half dozen rooms to go see, including architecture, glass, sacred silver and stained glass, household and decorative silver, and the theater and performance rooms. We also saw some other rooms, like paintings, along the way.

Of what we saw, I liked the sculpture, of course, but I also loved the theater rooms. They had costumes from The Lion King musical, and a First Folio of Shakespeare. They had the original horse puppet from The War Horse, which is a show I love. There was a Fred Astaire tux and stage designs for some famous productions and more. I don’t think I had ever seen anything like it before.

Even where we had lunch was spectacular – the cafe is decorated by heavy floral wallpaper designed by a famous designer, William Morris. We had dessert sitting in a sunny enclosed square, looking at a shallow splashing pool (although no one was in it today, since it was only about fifty-five degrees out).

One of the reasons we do this colleagues-included trips is so we can get to know our fellow teachers better. Mer and I both knew that Brianna was a fun person to be around, but we had not gotten to spend a ton of time with her. Today at the museum, the tour guide was introducing a glass cup and asked if anyone in the group of about twenty people believed in fairies. Brianna’s hand shot up as she said, “I do!” That was delightful. We knew she was a cool chick. Oh – the cup was supposed to have been left behind by a king of the fairies and had been passed along in one family for hundreds of years until the museum bought it.

We left the museum about 5:00 and went back to near Covent Gardens, to do a Rick Steves guidebook walk of the Gardens area that led over to Soho and Piccadilly Circus. When we got near the market area, I saw a souvenir shop and asked if I could go in it. Shelby had been looking for a specific souvenir, so I thought I would scout it out for her. Great minds think alike, because she and Neuf were already in the shop. And so we were reunited. They and we had also noted the same pub – The White Lion – earlier in the day and considered it a potential candidate for our dinner location, so we decided to eat there. After dinner, Shelby and Neuf went home, and the three of us finished up the walk. Soho does feel very bohemian, with lots of music shops and small streets, and Piccadilly Circus feels like Times Square had a love child with a quiet Paris neighborhood – garish lit-up signs reflected in the glass and stone fronts of elegant buildings. It is the heart of the theater district, so we saw lots of shows advertised.

Tomorrow is an early day, as we’re all heading out together to go tour Stonehenge. After that, who knows where our London fancies will take all of us?