London, England

We arrived in London on Wednesday, July 1. Our last visit was two years ago, so we thought we would take these few days to catch up on some of the cultural and other ''non-touristy'' sites we had neglected last time. We started off with a visit to the National Gallery which has a fine collection of Renaissance, Baroque and Impressionism works.


Next we walked through Trafalger Square, down Whitehall Blvd. to Westminster Abbey. On our last trip we attended an Evensong service but didn't get to tour the abbey; this time we did and the tour was greatly enhanced with the excellent audio guide.

Westminster Abbey

From Westminster Abbey we took the Underground to the British Library. Although it is a huge building, the really exciting parts can be savored in less than one hour. You can view such documents as the Magna Carta, Leonardo daVinci's notebook and Gutenberg bibles as well as original Beatles' lyrics written on scraps of paper and on the back of a greeting card. Yeah, I know. Most people would have trouble putting a document which establishes the basic rights of Man alongside a rock band's songs, but hey, they had to put the Magna Carta somewhere.





On Thursday evening we attended a performance of Billy Elliot - The Musical. Its a musical adaptation of the movie from several years ago. The choice of the play was Cindy's since Mike didn't care for the movie. Both, however, really enjoyed the stage production - especially the score by Elton John.

Outside Parliment and Big Ben

On Friday we strolled through the Portobello Road market in the Notting Hill neighborhood near our hotel. It was reported to be good for people watching, but there appeared to be as many tourists as locals.

We next visited the British Museum -- an all-encompassing collection of artifacts that could only be amassed by the wide-reaching arms of the British Empire. Articles included mummies and the Rosetta Stone from ancient Egypt, carvings from the Parthenon in Athens, sculptures from ancient Rome as well as carved winged lions from Assyria.

Pharaoh Statue in the British Museum

Assyrian Carving in the British Museum

Our ''cultural'' tour of London ended with a visit to the Abbey Road crosswalk featured on the cover of the Beatles album. It was interesting to see that most of the visitors in the area had probably not even been born when the album was released. It was also interesting to see that most of the drivers were used to the tourists attempting to re-create the album cover since its the only time we have seen London drivers yield to pedestrians.

Well, OK, maybe we did do a couple of ''touristy'' things, but where are ''The Lads''?

Our final pub visit in London coincided with the Wimbledon men's semi-final match between the USA's Andy Roddick and Britain's Andy Murray. The televised event seemed to rival the ales as the main focus in the pub. Not wanting to be labeled the ''Ugly Americans,'' we quietly finished our drinks and left smiling when the American won.

Dublin, Ireland

Since it had been over 10 years since our last visit to the Emerald Isle, we thought it might be a good idea to ease into our touring pace. We arrived in Galway, Ireland on Thursday, June 25 to warm temps and sunny skies. We enjoyed watching the locals getting their first taste of summer and sun in the public square. By the end of the day, their pasty-white legs and freckled noses had assumed a shade of red that rivaled their hair. We enjoyed the small town, slow-paced village feel of Galway before moving on to the more big-city pace of Dublin on Friday.

On the Ha' Penny Bridge Over the River Liffey


In Dublin, our B&B is near St. Stephen's Green which is within easy
walking distance of most of the sights. We took a tour of Trinity
College which is organized and led by the students. Our guide, a witty
young lady majoring in Arts and History, was a delight. The tour
continued with a viewing of The Book of Kells written in the late
eighth century by Irish monks. The tour ended in the Old Library which
contains 200,000 of the library's oldest books.

We spent the rest of the day strolling down O'Connell St., Dublin's
grandest promenade, and touring the Temple Bar area, one of the city's
trendy neighborhoods.

The next day we toured the Guinness Storehouse. We thought that since
we had partaken of so much of "Ireland's National Beverage", we should
check out the source of this wonderful elixir; we were not
disappointed -- especially since the tour included a free pint!




We experienced a chapter in Ireland's history when we toured the old
jail which held and executed some of the patriots who fought for Irish
independence from Britain.

At a tour of the Jameson (Irish whiskey) Distillery, we both were
chosen to participate in a special tasting panel at the end of the
tour. Eight tour members were asked to taste samples of Scotch, Irish
and American whiskies and vote for their favorite. Everyone preferred
the Irish whiskey except for Mike, who, being a native of Tennessee
and following his heart, favored the Jack Daniel's. However, to avoid
an international incident, he chose the Jameson Irish whiskey. We both
got diplomas for our efforts.

                      Graduation Day