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.