Day: November 20, 2007

For Veteran’s Day weekend this year, we decided a short trip to London was in order. So, we hopped on a flight to meet both my parents for a long weekend (yes, they had a much longer flight).
This trip was as much about hanging out with my parents as it was sight seeing. However, we still got to see a lot of fascinating sites.

We loved traveling on the tube. It’s one of the easiest public transportation systems we’ve used.

Since Anna and I have read all the Harry Potter books (and seen all the movies for that matter), we decided to pay due homage. We took a pilgrimage to King’s Cross Station in search of platform 9 and 3/4. The trials and tribulations that Harry experienced at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry all started here, on the invisible platform between platforms 9 and 10 that led to the Hogwarts Express train. Unfortunately, there is nothing actually between tracks 9 and 10. But, the rail service was kind enough to indulge us tourists with a luggage cart that is halfway through the magical portal.
Hogwarts, here comes Anna!

We had the opportunity to visit a number of museums on this trip. My personal favorite was the British Museum. If you can overlook the questionable ethics that acquiring this collection required, it is truly spectacular. In fact, it seemed to be an encyclopedia come to life. It’s huge though, so we focused on the big empires of the past: Egypt, Assyria and Greece. The first piece as you walk through the door is appropriately the Rosetta Stone. This is one of the spoils of Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt in the late 18th century. His engineers uncovered this massive stone and realized its significance. It has the same text translated in three languages, Greek, the common Egyptian language, and most importantly hieroglyphics. That was the key to re-discovering the meaning of all those symbols…

The text was from the time of Ptolemy in the second century BC.

This first image is what a common person looked like after being buried for 2,000 years.

This is Ginger (so called for the wisps of red hair). He is 2,500 years old. Although not a mummy in the traditional sense, he is incredibly well preserved. When he was buried, the wind, heat and dry desert climate all served to protect him.

These are pieces from the Elgin Marbles that originally decorated the Parthenon in Athens. Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803 asked permission to remove a number of pieces from the deteriorating building and bring them back to London. Permission was granted by the Ottoman Empire, and Lord Elgin brought back a number of pieces, including this 247 foot section of a frieze.

This statue from Easter Island is known as Hoa Hakananai’a (probably ‘Stolen’ or ‘hidden friend’) and was found in a stone house at Orongo, the center of a birdman cult.

Since we were there for Veteran’s Day (or Remembrance Day in the UK), we went to watch the royal celebration at the Cenotaph. As you can see, there was lots of patriotism in the air.

Of course, the crowds were giant.

There were 8,000 veterans who represented all the conflicts of the last century.



This is the cenotaph where everyone marched past and the royal family (and other dignitaries) laid their wreaths.

The Horse Guards.

Westminster Abbey and the venerable Sir Winston Churchill.

Here’s the Millennium Bridge in front of the Tate Modern Art Museum.

The Tate Modern is another fascinating site. It’s an old power station that has been converted into a museum. Actually, I think I liked the facility better than the art.

Here is the tube.


That concluded our great weekend in London with my parents. It was a whirlwind tour (as usual), but it was a lot of fun.
So, until the next adventure!
–Jim