A Choir Trip to England: Thursday, July 9

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The next morning we discovered "Continental breakfast." It included a pot of tea, a variety of rolls, jellies and marmalades, and orange juice. It was more than enough to eat, and any hotel that includes chocolate candy filling in one kind of the rolls has Bonnie's vote!

We started the day with a driving tour of London. We were introduced to the British "Blue Badge" guides, one on each coach. These experts on London told us it had 7 million people, covered 30 by 10 miles, and was divided into 32 boroughs. We saw it in 3 hours, from the coach, including:

• On the north side of the Thames river:
  • The British Broadcasting Company
  • Regents Street
  • The general area of Carnaby Street (trendy 60s stuff)
  • Marks & Spencer department store
  • Harrods department store
  • Garrard Jewelers (they clean Crown jewels)
  • Picadilly Circus with statue known as Eros but carved as "Angel of Christian Charity"
  • Leicester Square with half-price theater ticket stand
  • Texas Embassy Cafe
  • National Gallery of Art
  • Trafalger Square
  • Big Ben
  • Admiralty Arch
  • Capt. Cook statue
  • Pink paving in a road called the "red carpet leading to Buckingham Palace"
  • St. James' Park
  • St. James' Palace where Princes Charles, William and Harry live
  • Buckingham Palace
  • A park dedicated to Wellington
  • St. Georges' Hospital, now the most expensive hotel in London
  • Hyde Park, with its "speaker's corner" and sand track for riding horses
  • The Mayfair district (picture scenes in "My Fair Lady") near Oxford Street
  • Selfridges department store
  • The U.S. Embassy at Grovsner Square (The guide emphasized it is rented by us, not owned)
  • Barclay Square
  • Picadilly Square (the name came from piece of clothing, a "picadill," invented to hold up those large ruffs for collars in Elizabeth I's time)
  • The Ritz Hotel
  • The former site of the official Texas Embassy
  • The Royal Academy of Arts
  • Fortnum & Mason
  • Horseguards Gate
  • Her Majesty's Treasury
  • The Houses of Parliament
  • Westminster Abbey
  • The River Thames
  • Tate Gallery
• On the south side:
  • MI-6 British Intelligence headquarters (which we weren't supposed to notice; it's like our CIA)
  • The station for the Eurostar Train that goes through the Chunnel to France
  • Waterloo Station
  • The theater district
  • The BBC world service headquarters
  • The Astor family offices
  • Blackfriars church
  • St. Andrew of the Wardrobe (a treasury/storehouse, not clothes closet)
  • St. Paul's Cathedral
  • The College of Arms, the official center for heraldry
  • Bow Lane
  • "The City" financial district
  • A monument to Great Fire of London
  • The 1970's version of London Bridge
  • The Old Fish Market
  • The Tower of London
  • Tower Bridge
  • Parts of the old Roman walls
  • All Hallows by Tower church
  • The reconstructed Globe Theater
  • The Salvation Army International Headquarters
  • Cheapside, the former marketplace near Aldersgate Church
  • Wesley's Chapel

Wesley Chapel

The Wesley Chapel was the first stop "Following in the Footsteps of John Wesley." Standing where the founder of our Methodist fellowships, John Wesley, and his family, had walked was thrilling. Even more moving was watching our retired pastors and long-time lay leaders touch our history.

The chapel in London was only the first symbol of the historic and current presence of the Wesleyan dissent in what has become a country where church is "not a place one wants to take children." We were warned before we left the U.S. that Britain is labelled by many as a "post religious" society. What we found bears that out.

There is a vague hunger we sense on this island. Will it fade, or will another John Wesley fan it to flame?

Westminster Cathedral

At Westminster the choir, with string accompaniment, sang a short program between Masses. The small audience didn't outnumber the non-singing members of our group. The music hung in the air for long seconds after each song, especially Sonja Johnson's solo. That, and the sheer age of the holy building, made it "goosebump time," as Larry said.

The Victoria & Albert Museum

One of the places Larry and I both wanted to visit was the Victoria & Albert Museum. Unfortunately it isn't open on Fridays, so our only chance was that afternoon. With Susan's encouragement, we learned to ride London's underground Tube to get there and back.

By the time we arrived, we only had about an hour and a half, which was not quite enough to thoroughly enjoy the exhibit on clothing throughout the "modern" British age. (Modern covers a much longer time there.) We could have spent days in the V&A and I wanted Rebecca there to see it all. It's one thing to see medieval dress created for a play at the Point Theatre; it's another to see the real thing, plus the underpinnings, shoes, hats, and so forth.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped near where we needed to catch the underground, Victoria Station, and ate supper at "Shakespeare's Pub." The food was excellent. Larry tried Cumberland Curl, a spiral of thin sausage shaped like a stickybun, and we split sponge pudding (chocolate).