Rain at the Abbey

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Today was the first day we’ve seen rain, so not too bad for the time we’ve spent here. We took the Circle Tube Line around to Parliament and came up right at the foot of Big Ben. Around the corner was our next stop at Westminster Abbey. This is a magnificent Church, and that’s putting in mildly. It holds a massive collection of gravesites and memorials including Queen Elizabeth I, Mary I (known as Bloody Mary), Mary Queen of Scots, King Edward the Confessor, King Richard II, King Henry VII, King Edward VI (Henry VIII only son who died at 16), etc. There were many famous writers and poets such as Dickens, Tennyson, Chaucer, the Bronte Sisters, Jane Austen, as well as scientists Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. It was an amazing site indeed.








After lunch we went up to the British Library because if you know Troy, you know that she loves to visit local libraries in the cities we visit. Only this library was a bit different. We walked in to find a five story steel and glass tower in the middle of the library filled with rows upon rows of books owned by King George III, over 200,000 books and manuscripts. Then into a room where hundreds of historical books and documents were on display. Things like the original Alice In Wonderland penned and illustrated by Lewis Carroll, William Shakespeare writings, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, the Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, Mozart and Beethoven music sheets penned by them, the original lyric sheet by Paul McCartney for “Yesterday”. We had no idea ANY of this stuff was here, so it was a nice little surprise.