Thursday, June 30, 2005

GREETINGS FROM JOLLY OLD LONDON!

Well, we all can’t believe it’s actually the last day, but (was it Shakespeare who said this…) all good things must come to an end.

A nice and late sleep in until our breakfast and bus pick up at 9:15 for a busy day in London. Unfortunately, our last time here was quite overcast and showered on and off all day. But we didn’t let the dampness stop our good times!

As we drove through the city streets, our city guide Allison pointed out the interesting and well known sights like Fleet Street, the Parliament, Big Ben, London Bridge, Tower of London…..never ended all those names we’ve heard of all these years! Westminster Abbey was our first tour and, even though we’ve seen what we think is every cathedral in the country, there were different specialties about each one. Westminster is definitely cool and great to see so many of the tombs of the people we’ve heard about on this trip including Mary Queen of Scots.

Off on the bus and over to the Tower of London where we ate lunch on the side of the River Thames and thankfully, rain was holding off during our outside time. The tour of the Tower was great! All of the morbid stories from so long ago came to life as the ravens, who act like they own the place, strutted around so possessively. Ask your kids about the story about the ravens and the two little boys’ remains found under the White Tower.

After the Tower of London we were taken for some more retail therapy back at the fun Jubilee Market at Covent Gardens and then Christopher Robin surprised us by arranging for a different dinner location that was lots of fun right on the River Thames where some actors from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” were roaming the crowd. So funny!

Run back to the hotel for another hour of shopping in our hotel neighborhood, off to pack and hopefully a good last night all together. We’ll have some sad goodbyes to those that are leaving the choir for whatever reason and this group will change somewhat. Some kids are heading off to other points in Europe tomorrow and not riding the same plane back to Chicago with us.

A great trip, wonderful growing experience, terrific performances, immense educational learning opportunities – both musically and historically. Once again, we thank you for trusting us with your kids way, way over here, and for the chance to share these experiences with all of them. We hope you’re pleased with the young people that return to your homes and that you’ve enjoyed the postcards and photos.

Thanks SO MUCH to Chris Thorn for the posting of the photos and these postcards and for walking through the steps and hand holding that this dense computer user needs.

We’ll be seeing most of you at Bethany and plan to give you a call when we have a good idea of our closer arrival time when we know that.

So, until I SEE you again, I’m signing off…..
SUE