So - Was It Worth It?

Unquestionably. No attention paid to the standard responses, the sort of thing that you say to teachers and school administrators so that they will purse their lips and stamp their forms and sigh and allow that perhaps, just this once, in view of the great educational benefit... no attention paid to that, it was unquestionably worth it.

We of course received different impressions, different delights, each of us, but there were common wonders as well. We all liked the London Eye. Benefiting from the low number of tourists at the time, our capsule was half full, allowing us to walk back and forth, looking at the other capsules, up and down river, and over into the City, watching Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament from multiple levels and angles. My daughter delighted in simply sitting on the floor, up against the curved glass, watching as the skyline slid by.

And we were all taken by the Tower of London -- amazed that it wasn’t a single Tower, but a series of buildings and castles, complete with a moat (now dry, with a running track and tennis court), all sweeping up from the Thames, the Tower Bridge looming in the background. The grounds reeked of history to each of us, and we all listened with guilty fascination as the uniformed Beefeater (who said that they did not in fact know the origin of the name; all suggestions welcome) told us of the goings-on at the execution spot, and how one woman managed to get away almost to the end of the hill before being hauled back to be hacked to pieces. He told us too of the great Crown Jewel heist that almost made it, and would have had they turned right instead of left -- and that a little known fact was that the ER on his uniform stood, in his case, at least, for Extremely Romantic -- and this after his twenty-plus years of service to the Crown, culminating in recognition for honorable service -- or as he put it, ‘twenty years of undiscovered crime’.

Even the famous Tube had its charms, once we discovered how to manipulate it, taking the Bakerloo line down past Baker Street, sliding around on the Circle Line, navigating the Northern Line. It was hot, and crowded, at times, but it was still fun. And the Westminster Station was not to be believed.

But the single most amazing spot, one where we could have returned again and again, I think, was Westminster Abbey.

I’m not a religious person, and so the building did not fill me with any degree of religious awe. But that left lots of room for awe at the sheer history of the place -- the thought that the building had been there for almost a thousand years, that the names emblazoned on walls, and floors, were the living history of England. And even if it were not, the size and majesty of the building, the glass in the windows -- it damn near took my breath away.

All right, it did take my breath away.