Lovely London Continued...

Our itinerary for day two in London was very ambitious. There were still lots of sights to be seen. We started our morning at the Tower of London. Maria really liked this statue: This is where the old meets new. The Tower of London sits in the middle of many modern buildings. It's hard to believe that a 900 year-old building sits right across the street from buildings completed within the past 5 years! We did not tour the Tower, because entrance fees were $35 per person! With so many amazing free sights, we didn't think it would be worth the time or cost.

Fortunately, walking across the Tower Bridge is free!

Can you find me in this picture? Don't forget to click on it to make your search easier.

If you're having trouble finding me in the previous picture, I think I'm easier to spot in this one. We thought this would be a cool picture, so I made Maria run way ahead to capture it. Who am I kidding? I'm the one who had to backtrack! Anything for a great snapshot. As you can probably tell by now, we really enjoyed this bridge. However, we were surprised to learn that this is not THE London Bridge. You know, the one that is falling down. Here is the real London Bridge. Kind of makes you wonder why the song isn't about the Tower Bridge. Here is my favorite graduate with an English degree standing in front of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. It took about 3 hours for Maria to stop talking in olde English after seeing the Globe. Just kidding, she doesn't know how to speak that way because Cliff's Notes are not written in olde English! Oh yes, I went there! Departing the Globe, we headed to Tate Modern. This is a modern art museum and is displayed in a converted warehouse. Admission to this museum was also free! Now I must admit, I'm not a huge fan of modern art. In this picture, you can really see how I'm struggling to understand the artist's inspiration. What are those things lying all over the floor? Is that symbolic poop or something? I'm certainly open to any suggestions. Don't get me wrong, this museum certainly displayed many great pieces, but a few of them just confused me. Overall, we were very glad to have visited and we thought that it was definitely the best modern art collection we'd ever viewed. Here are some of our favorite works, along with some of the more interesting ones. I've left out the really disturbing ones. Don't forget to click the picture to enlarge it!

After leaving Tate Modern, we crossed the Millennium Bridge over the River Thames and walked towards St. Paul's Cathedral.

The unique handrail-looking things on the side of the bridge were actually designed to deflect the wind over the heads of pedestrians. As you can see from this picture, it seems to be working, especially when you compare this picture to the one of Maria on the bridge in our previous blog post. We really wanted to visit both the British Library and the British Museum before leaving London, but both of these sights were closing early, so we decided to only walk by St. Paul's Cathedral. This was a wise decision, because the British Library was one of the most impressive sights that we visited in London. The building itself was nothing special. It was a giant red-brick building and looked like it could have been part of NC State's campus. However, what made the British Library special was its display of rare documents and books. I think it must be the most impressive collection in the entire world. Here is a listing of a few items that we saw:

• Shakespeare's First Folio (first printed collection of his plays) (1623)
  
• Composition drafts by Handel (Messiah), Beethoven (6th Symphony), Schubert, Bach, and Mozart.
  
• Captain Robert Falcon Scott's diary from his tragic South Pole expedition (1911-1912)
  
• Gutenberg's Bible (1455)
  
• Original, hand-written version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1862)
  
• 1st edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1476)
  
• The Magna Carta (1215)
  
• 1st printed edition of the New Testament in English, translation by William Tyndale (1526)
• Leonardo da Vinci's notebook (1508 - 15219)
  
• Florence Nightingale's letters describing the conditions during the Crimean War (1854)
  
• Handwritten Beatle's lyrics to Help, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and a few others
  
• Portions of the Codex Sinaiticus (earliest surviving copy of the complete New Testament) (4th century)
• Vladimir Lenin's application for a British Museum reader's pass (1902)

Okay, Maria says that I've already listed enough, but I think you have the idea. The extent of the collection is truly amazing. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed, but Maria was able to sneakily snap a photo of the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

In the center of the British Library, there is a display of King George III's book collection, called the King's Library. It reminded us of our collection of old books at our home in Raleigh, but of course, ours is not nearly as impressive or as old!

From the British Library, we hurried over to the British Museum. Our favorite exhibit was the famous Rosetta Stone. This stone was instrumental in unlocking the secrets of ancient hieroglyphic writing. You might have heard of the Rosetta Stone because of the language program that has the same name. We are actually using it to learn German.

The museum is filled with many artifacts from ancient civilizations. What set this museum apart from others for us, was that it allowed photography. As you can see, we took full advantage of this opportunity. After snapping all those photos, we were hungry, but desert before dinner? Only on vacation.
As we were walking down the street, we stumbled upon this... (this is for Maria's mom)
Big Ben! This time at sunset. One of Maria's favorite movies is Notting Hill. Since the suburb of Notting Hill is located just outside of London, I was forced to visit in hopes that Maria would recognize a street or house or something from the movie. She did not. However, all was not lost since the area was really nice, even if the parts that we saw were not in the movie.
Proof that we actually visited Notting Hill and proof of how excited Maria was.
Speaking of movies set in London, we also visited the train platform that was made famous by the Harry Potter movies. It is located in the imressive King's Cross Station.
London was like no other city that we have visited during our time in Europe. It has a similar energy to New York City, but has more historical sights. After two busy days in London, we were ready to see some of the English country side.