Day 2 in London was a very ambitious (meaning long) tour day. We had an excellent breakfast at the hotel (they have a hot buffet every day), so that was a good start. We had one room of girls who all managed to sleep through their alarm, but Mer checked on them in time that they were still ready to go when we needed to leave. We headed out the door to the Tube at around 8:30, and we would be gone the rest of the day until about 11:30 p.m.

We went downtown to Victoria Station. Victoria Station is a large Tube/train/bus station where we were going to pick up a double-decker tour bus. We used the bathrooms, and I asked at a couple of information desks about where to get the bus. So, we ended up being in Victoria Station for about ten minutes. Meredith and I love train stations in Europe, because they have the huge boards with place names and train numbers on them. They sound exotic, and it is cool to think you can get to these places by just getting on a train. Train stations are full of possibilities. I hope the kids felt some of it.

Anyway, we tracked down a Big Bus Company bus, and the driver told me how to walk the block-and-a-half to get to the company shop, where I could cash in my internet voucher for real tickets, and then we could catch a bus from there. That went smoothly, and we hopped on a bus and went up to the second deck. The front few rows of seats were under cover and behind a windshield, and were thus warmer. Still, the day was sunny, if cool (in the low 40s), so several of us decided we liked the glass-free views and the option to look up, so we sat out in the wind. Yes, it was cold by the end of the two-hour trip, but it was a great way to see the city.

We did want a live guide, as opposed to a tape-recorded commentary. Mer and I are huge believers in live guides. They tend to love what they do, are entertaining, and can answer questions. Our first bus was of the recorded kind, so we transferred after two stops to a live-guide bus. We wandered up to the top floor of the bus, and were immediately greeted by a very friendly guide who wanted to know where we were from. When he found out we were from (roughly) Cleveland, he announced he had a fun fact about Cleveland, and proceeded to tell everyone on the bus that London had the first traffic signal, which was run by a man pulling various strings, but that Cleveland had the first electric traffic signal. It was a promising sign that he was going to be a great guide.

His name was Phil, and he was probably in his early 50s, and he was a wonderful guide. He had a funny and charming and informative style of commenting on what were seeing (while we were in the theater district, he told the ladies of the bus that their men really did not want to go see Dirty Dancing the Musical), and still managed to convey lots of information about London (including being able to rattle off all forty-plus monarchs of England since Edward the Confessor from 1060 onward). Mer and I loved this guide – he was very very good at what he did.

The Big Bus tour took us all around London in a kind of figure-8. We saw all the major sights, in two hours, with sparkling commentary. Some of the sights I remember are: Speakers’ Corner in a large park (where anyone can say anything they like on Sundays to anyone who cares to listen), the shopping district, the theater district, Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, Westminster Abbey and Parliament and the London Eye, the new and unimpressive London Bridge, the much more impressive Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, and many more places that I am now forgetting. It was a great tour, and well worth getting cold for.

We alighted (a favorite British Tube word) from the bus back at Victoria Station, and we jumped back on the Tube to get back to the Thames near Westminster. There, we picked up a riverboat that took us downstream to the Tower Bridge, which took about twenty or twenty-five minutes. They also had a person providing commentary, and it was interesting to see things from the river, something neither Mer nor I had ever done.

This got us to near the Tower of London bridge at about 12:45, and we had a scheduled tour at the new Globe Theater at 2:00. The Globe is not really near any mass transportation stops, so Mer and I decided we would use the opportunity to walk from the Tower to the Globe. This let us cross the very cool Tower Bridge on foot, and then we were able to follow the river back upstream to the Globe, which took about forty-five minutes at a pretty fast pace. I think the kids may have been caught off guard at the walking pace I set in the front, with Mer keeping people moving along from the rear of the group. We did get to the Globe at around 1:30, so the kids had about twenty-five minutes to find and grab something quick to eat before our tour.

The Globe is an accurate-as-possible reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, and it is an active theater from about March through October. Since it is an open-roof theater, there is no live theater during the winter, but they do have a museum about Shakespeare, and they offer live tours of the theater. We started with a live tour, which was given by a charming (and rather handsome, which probably did not hurt) man who had worked at the Globe since it opened in 1998. He was also a director, and so was a great resource for us. He was delighted with our small group, so he was able to take us to all three levels of the galleries in the theater. He told us lots of amusing stories about how theater was banned in London proper, so the Globe was across the Thames from London, and how the modern Globe was built by the efforts of an American ex-pat, and he shared with us some of the odder questions he had gotten over the years, which included, “What was Shakespeare’s last name?”, “Who painted the sky in the theater?” and “Does Shakespeare ever come to see his plays here?”  He was a lot of fun, and again showed the wisdom of getting live guides as much as possible.

  We then let everyone loose in the gift store and museum for a little over an hour. The kids especially liked the interactive exhibits that let them record themselves reading Shakespeare. Mer and I and several students got to see a demonstration of how scripts were printed using early printing presses, which looked really difficult since it involved a lot of careful manual labor.

At around 4:30 or so, we headed back across the river. We walked along the pedestrian-only Millennium Bridge, which is cool in itself, but also offers my favorite view in London – the head of the bridge frames St. Paul’s perfectly, and it is breathtaking. We walked up to and around St. Paul’s, and jumped on the Tube nearby. We headed back to the theater district, where we were going to see War Horse. We showed the kids where the theater was, reminded them to stay in groups of three or more, and turned them loose to go find supper wherever they wanted, as long as they were back to the theater by 6:45.

Mer and I found another very authentic Italian restaurant, which we followed up by a piece of cake in a British cafe. We wandered around for a few minutes just to be wandering in London, and then went to the theater. Happily, all the kids did arrive by 6:45, and they had all found good places to eat.

After everyone was back at the theater (the kids have been wonderful about being on time), we hung out until the doors opened. We had fifteen seats together in the back row of the main floor, sixteen rows back; they were very good seats for a sweeping play like War Horse. I had come across War Horse while looking online at other plays, and from what I could see from the website, I fell in love with the story. Without giving too much away, War Horse is based on a children’s book (and thus qualifies for Literary London), and is about a sixteen-year-old boy who raises a horse. The horse then gets taken by the British Army for use in World War 1, and the boy decides to enlist to go find his horse. It is a powerful story with lots of magnificent relationships, but the jaw-dropping part of the show were the horses. They were full-sized puppets that could actually carry a full grown man. They had amazing range of motion and emotion, including fully articulating ears. It was very easy to forget they were puppets. Check out a short clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-bni4QqSv4

I actually expected to get misty-eyed during War Horse, but what surprised me was when – it was not during battle scenes, but during touching moments when everyone was at home before the war. War Horse is one of the most remarkable pieces of theater I have ever seen, and not just becuase of the horses – the story is very well written. I am delighted we got to see it, and the kids all seemed to be very moved.

We made our way back home after the show pretty directly, but still did not get home until almost 11:30. The kids never complained and kept up with everything all day. What a joy to have kids like these along on this trip. This really is what Meredith had envisioned when she proposed the class.