London (update from germany)

the update from Germany explains any typos. We#re in an internet cafe so I can check in on my class stuff, and the keyboards are laid out differently to account for the German characters.

We spent a quick afternoon in London on Thurs. Rode the shuttle down to the airport (about 80 miles), stashed our luggage in a locker and headed into town for the afternoon. We spent most of the afternoon in Westminster square looking at Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, 10 Downing Street and Trafalgar square.

We didn't actually tour any of the buildings, but we did tour the Winston Churchill war museum, tunnels and passages underneath Westminster square that Churchill and his war council used as headquarters during the war. The tour is self-paced; they give you large cell phones through which you listen to an explanation of the bunker. Really one of the cooler museums I've been in. Churchill sounds like he was a real SOB, however. First in London and now here in Germany you get a very different perspective on WW2 than you do in the states. I didn't realize it the day we were there, but Cambridge is home to the only official American War cemetary in Britain. I would have liked to have visited it if I had known.

Then it was beer and bangers and mash in a local pub and back out to the airport to collect our bags before boarding another bus to a suburban airport to catch a few winks before our Friday AM flight to Germany. BUT...... on the way back to the airport made a quick detour to Kings Cross Station and Platform 9 and three quarters, where theres a luggage cart halfway protruding from the wall readying to board the Hogwarts express.