Somusing

It was fun to get to know London a little better. We only had a few days there but saw quite a bit, as Erin wrote about a few weeks ago. This is the Elizabeth Tower, previously called the Clock Tower, which contains Big Ben , the bell inside the tower, which reminds me of my grandparents Jensen's house in Pocatello, Idaho because they had a mantel clock that rang the tune of Big Ben every hour: Nearby was a statue of Abraham Lincoln (along with some other non-British people of note), down the street others of Richard the Lionheart and Oliver Cromwell: Erin didn't like this monument to the women of World War II, but I did: We didn't test out this claim, but we were careful not to let them read more of our minds than just how much room they might have: Near our apartment in Lewisham was this amazing bit of regulation limiting the number of dogs per walker to 4. I'd love to see the abuses that led to this rule! War memorial by St. Paul's cathedra...

After leaving Pocklington on July 31, we spent a week in London before flying to Prague for our second stay. Various groups of us went on a walking tour, watched boats on the Thames, went to the British Museum and National Gallery, went on the London Eye, went to the LDS church in Lewisham, "saw" the Prime Meridian, walked under the river, bought cheap clothes at Primark, rode trains and the Tube, went to Evensong at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, walked over the river on the Millennium Bridge, walked on a bridge over the train tracks on the Railway Children walk, and saw hundreds of feral parakeets around our apartment and in a nearby cemetery. Looking over the River Thames. Some of those feral parakeets from the bridge over the railway at sunset. Awesome Assyrian wall carvings at the British Museum. (There is so much cool stuff there! Like the real, actual Rosetta Stone!) Really old stuff (up to 5000 years old) the kids were allowed to touch...