Last day in London / homeward bound

Our final day of the tour started with a visit to Westminster Abbey, for which we had specialist tour guides. Some of the most important royals are buried there - Elizabeth I, Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots - as well as commoners (Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and musicians Ralph Vaughn Williams and Henry Purcell, in addition to the many creative artists in Poets' Corner).

We were able to work in a jaunt to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard, the end of which coincided with a nationwide moment of silence at noon in honor of the one-year anniversary of the terrorist transport bombings here in London. After lunch in St. James Park, amid a variety of interesting waterfowl, we took a boat ride on the Thames to the Tower of London. We had some time there to see the crown jewels, poke around the grounds, and pester the yeoman warders (beefeaters) with questions about the Tower (like this random woman, who is not part of our group.)

After a tasty and low-key dinner at Salieri's, people went off on their own. Almost half of us went on the London Eye, which is the giant ferris wheel built for the Millennium celebration. The views were amazing (though scary, at least for some of us).

This is probably my last blog post from London. It is after midnight, and we have a very early departure time tomorrow. I have told band members that I will solicit their best photos for inclusion in a photo album that will be put on the main FCCB site - and I will clean up the blog posts to make a nice recap. Thanks for being our virtual companions on our England tour. We hope you have enjoyed reading about it; we have certainly enjoyed doing it.