an english easter

Europe takes vacation very seriously, so we took advantage and hopped the English Channel for a four day Easter weekend in London filled with a lot (seriously, A LOT) of walking and very little sleep!

We saw lots of sites, drank lots of pints, ate fish and chips and as much other American-like food we could get our hands on, consumed as much filtered "normal" coffee as possible, spoke lots of English, caught a musical and watched... Michigan basketball. The only thing that could have been better was some warmer weather!

Nerd Alert - A big highlight for me was to visit John Snow's Broad Street Pump and Pub! If you're brave enough... A (short) History Lesson from Val: John Snow was the founding father of Epidemiology. He identified the source of the cholera epidemic to the Broad Street Water Pump in Soho London and suggested that the handle be removed so residents could no longer access the public water. This action represents the challenges and continuous changes in public health.

 Unfortunately, the Queen wasn't around for afternoon tea... but we stopped by the palace anyway.

We braved the long line at Westminster Abbey to take the tour. I don't think either of us realized how many tombs were inside and how small the actual "church" area is.

We visited the Tower of London on Sunday and thankfully arrived right as it opened. We later learned that Easter Sunday is the busiest day of the year... toward the end of it, we just wanted to get OUT! The Crown Jewels are housed here and WOW, they are pretty! We read that we should immediately see them because the line gets long and LONNNNNGGG is right! By the time we left, there were hundreds waiting to see!

We walked past St. Paul's Cathedral later that afternoon - where Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married. We were pretty toured out so we didn't go inside.

We are back to the land of the French, where we can't understand a whole lot of anything... London was an awesome city and a very nice language barrier break!