London

What a day! We started out by dropping our luggage at St. Pancras Train Station so that we could pick them up later on our way out to the airport hotel. This train station is right across from King’s Cross Station, which is famous because Harry Potter boards a magical train to Hogwarts via platform 9 ¾ which is accessed through a magical brick wall. As you can see, Yasmin and Roya are also magical as they had no problems pushing their luggage trolley through!

Next we visited the Queen’s house. She was home (the flag was flying), but she had so many guests that we thought we wouldn’t bother her for a cup of tea. I’m sure she was disappointed and the girls figured that she would have liked to hear about our trip, but we were just too busy today to visit the old girl. However, as we went by we were happy to wave at the guards as they changed shifts.

From Buckingham Palace it is only a short walk to the parliament buildings, Big Ben, and Westminster Abby. We took some pictures and thought about visiting the Prime Minister on Downing Street, but we decided the London Eye would be more fun.

We crossed the bridge and went on the London Eye. It’s a huge ferris wheel that was built for the millennium. You go up in this glass pod that’s big enough to have a party in and you inch slowly upwards. The weather was perfect for some really amazing views of the city.

We crossed back over the river and took a walk to Trafalgar Square. Then we caught the underground to The Monument which was built to mark the Great Fire of London in 1666, which burned for more than three days and took over 13,000 houses.

From London Bridge we had a great view of Tower Bridge. It looks kind of like it stepped out of a fairy tale, particularly next to some of the modern structures around it. We walked down for a closer look at Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, but by this time it was getting late in the afternoon and we didn’t have enough time to go in and explore. It looked like it would have been great, so we’ll have to come back another time for that, I guess.

We ended our day by making our way to the grave site of Shoghi Effendi who was the great-grandson of Baha’u’llah - the founder of the Baha’i Faith. It was a quiet and spiritual way to end our day. We thought of all the Baha’is we have met on our trip as we said a few prayers, and although we were very late getting to the hotel afterward, I’m really glad we made the effort to go and end our day that way.

CM