London

Not a whole lot to say about London, although, I really do like it there. Both of us had already been to London, so we didn’t want to spend too much time there when we could be exploring new places. But London is such a huge hub and is almost unavoidable since we were flying from Berlin that we decided to spend a few days there.

Stephanie wanted to see Book of Mormon, but it was of course sold out. We put our names in for the lottery, but we didn’t win. So we saw One Man, Two Guvnors instead. It was funny until (spoiler) you realize all but 1 of the spontaneous and/or audience participation bits were rigged.

We walked around a bit to the usual places like Elizabeth Tower (formerly Big Ben) and Westminster Abbey.

The apartment we stayed at was very close to Baker Street. Just outside the tube station is a large shadowy statue of Sherlock Holmes.

Stephanie’s goal for the UK was to visit as many castles as possible. Castles in the UK are like Sonics in Oklahoma City. There’s so many to choose from. But we did our best. We visited Dover castle, which was a short train ride away. Dover castle has a unique history, and a relatively recent one at that. Dover is at the southeast corner of England, about as close as you can get to France on land. So when the Germans were taking over France cornering hundreds of thousands of French and British tropps, they had little choice but to escape across the channel to England. Dover castle was a military post at the time. Operation Dynamo was going to rescue 40,000 soldiers. In 9 days, they rescued 338,226. The castle grounds had a tunnel system that was built hundreds of years ago that they used for a hospital and other war operations. They recently converted the tunnels into nice historical exhibits where parts had sounds that might have been heard during war time. The castle itself paled in comparison to the WW2 history.

There was 1 more thing we did in London, which was my main reason for wanting to go there: Harry Potter Studios. But that needs its own page.