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We arrived in London last week to Winnie's brother's house outside of London. Her brother Matt and his wife Deb have a lovely home with 3 little ones; Courtney, Jessica and Louis. I was surprised at all the green space here, I pictured London to be much more crowded and suspect this is the case closer to town center.
Our first touristy trip was to Windsor Castle, the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world, home to Her Majesty The Queen. She wasn't in the day were there so was unavailable for comment or photos. I asked one of the gaurds if they have beer and pizza night with Queenie, but he didn't have much to say.
The place was like nothing I have ever seen in my life, the artwork was what blew me away the most. Original paintings of Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses, Knights and others. There were some sketches by Leonardo DaVinci in the Queen's private collection. There was a massive dollhouse with electricity and plumbing, rare jewels, a sword collection from all over the world, tables made out of silver, entire murals on the ceilings in several of the
rooms, and all the other nicknacks you would expect to find in a royal palace. It was really something, unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle.
The next trip we took was to Glastonbury. WOW. This was a real hippy town, so I liked it straight away, but there was more than just hippies in this town, A LOT more!
We went first to the Glastonbury Abbey, the earliest Christian sanctuary in Britain. They say even Jesus used to go by from time to time. It was originally built in 600, but was burnt down in 1184 and then rebuilt. So what we saw was standing and in operation from 1184 until 1539 when the Abbey was seized on the orders of King Henry VIII and many of the stones were taken down and used elsewhere.
Next stop was Stonehenge. Oh boy, this was really something. One of the wonders of the world and a real brainteaser. One stone is the weight of seven elephants and some of the stones come from Wales, a bit of a trek for something that heavy. It is situated on a field and one
obvious feature of Stonehenge is that is was used for some kind of sun ceremony. There is an alter in the middle with stones around it in a semi-oval shape. Around that was a circle with "small" Bluestones and around that a larger cirlce with very big Sarsen stones standing straight up with other stones lying flat and connecting with each other on top of the outer circle. What remains today are only a few of the original stones. The missing ones were stolen or used for building materials in the days past.
There are other stones on the periphery of the big circle which create a certain shadow on summer and winter solstice that makes people think the usage had to do with the cycle of the sun. They had a sort of fence up around it so we could not touch the stones or get very close.
So next week the Griswald's leave London on a weeklong whirlwind trip to France, Switzerland, Germany and AMSTERDAM!!!!! That's right, Winnie and Barry in the Red Light District, here we come!!!!
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Joseph
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;-)
Good to see some photos! Looks and sounds like a pretty interesting few weeks!