First Full Day in London!

I have some students working on more stories from our time at St Briavel's Castle, and our visit to the Roman Baths in the town of Bath.  Meanwhile, I will post some photos with highlights from our non-stop busy day in London.

We started off Monday morning with our coach driver, Pepe taking us down to Westminster to meet our tour guidss.  On the way he mentioned it was his birthday so the whole bus burst into " Happy Birthday To You," of course!

We broke up into our two tour groups, mainly younger students in one group and older students in the other.  Two well-informed tour guides walked us through the streets, sharing rich stories of British history all along the way.  We love history!  We love story-tellers! We love our tour guides!

This is the east side and older section of Westminster Abbey, built in the 1500's.  This photo shows a beautiful flying buttress.  Our tour guide demonstrated to the younger students how a buttress works by having two students form an arm with their hands raised up and braced against each other.  The arch was easily pulled down.  But when two more students pushed on the backs of the two arch students, the arch was much stronger.

Our group of young students at The Houses of Parliament with The Elizabeth Tower.  We know it as Big Ben but that was never it's proper name.  It was officially re-named The Elizabeth Tower in the Queen's Jubilee celebration.  Big Ben is the nickname for the enormous bell inside the tower, it's official name is The Great Bell.  The nickname is presumed to have been in honor of the man who oversaw the installation of The Great Bell, a rotund fellow named Sir Benjamin Hall.

Here are some photos from the Tower of London where many historically famous executions took place.  It's also where the Crown Jewels are kept.  Ken and I had a chance to see the Crown Jewels and we were impressed not only with the jewels but the 18" thick steel vault doors that secure the room where they are held inside this old structure. The Tower was built by William the Conqueror to intimidate the London citizens after he had conquered the country

London is a fascinating place to study architecture.  There is a wide variety of buildings dating back 1,000 years, and they are still in use!  Every era leaves it's stamp in architecture. In the current era, any large building in London is not a basic skyscraper that goes straight.  In fact you'd be hard pressed to find a straight skyscraper here.  They build modern pyramids, modified domes, rounded obelisks, and many indescribable shapes.  This pyramid is a new skyscraper called The Shard (of Glass) and it's the tallest building in the European Union.

I love the juxtaposition of this modern sky scraper with it's intimidating lean over the old buildings below.  Someone remarked that it looks like I shot this with a fish eye lens.  Nope.  That building really gets wider and curves out on both sides at the top.  

I snapped this photo out the front window of our coach as we drove down the rainy motorway into Bath yesterday. (We only had to walk a few minutes in light rain, then it stopped.) Driving on the left side of the road is so strange.  Even the road signs appear to face the wrong direction.

Our coach driver Pepe is doing an amazing job of maneuvering this huge bus through tight London streets and parallel parking spots.  He's also full of great information on London and provides tour guide narrative as he drives.  We love Pepe and sang Happy Birthday to him today.