London #2.
My dad said this in his email to me:Have a pleasant stay in UK – now still your country…….
Hmms. God save the Queen. And I don't know that dad is so patriotic.
Anyway though, my British passport is really very nice. I cleared immigration in less than one minute in both Frankfurt and London, in either case there is no queue. The German immigration guy just took a glance at the identification page handed it straight back to me... I cannot imagine if I have to join the long line in Frankfurt twice just to get myself re-checked to the BA flight.
Anyway, despite the rain, I managed to get to quite a few places and watched Mama Mia!. It was good fun :) and the familiar catchy tunes from ABBA!
Westminster Abbey is genuinely amazing. I have not visited St. Paul's though (went there too late). The British Library's collection of stuff is amazing too: one of the first copies of the original 1611 King Jame's Bible, fragment of the Dead Sea Scroll, the original 1526 first English translation of the Bible, draft of Handel's Messiah, the famous 17th century circulation illustration by Harvey, original copy of Alice in the Wonderland, Newton's letter to Hooke, Captain Cook's diary...
They also house 2 original 1215 copies of the Magna Carta, which made me realise the copy in Washington is only a 1295 affirmed copy. The British are certainly more frank about the exact nature of the original Magna Carta too :)
And do you know that the New Testament was originally written in Greek? Yup, not Latin, not Hebrew, Greek. St. Jerome translated it to Latin :P
Catchphrase on a British Museum T-Shirt: I may not be the best, but at least I am different. Wanted to buy that shirt... but it costs £19.99?! So just bought a £2.99 Rosetta Stone key chain.
Labels: Travel
