By Glenda Winders and Lesley Sauls
When my daughter was 15 I took her to London for a semester while I worked on a master's degree project there. I enrolled her in an international school, so while I worked she studied, and on weekends we traveled out into the countryside, north to Scotland or across the English Channel to Paris and Amsterdam.
The experience left such an impression on her that she hoped to repeat it with her daughters, now 15 (Maggie) and 13 (Carly). But times have changed, and they are too involved in school and extracurricular activities to be away for so long. This being the case, we took them for a highlights tour.
I left up to my daughter what those highlights would be, and here's what she selected for our whirlwind tour of London.
Of course stops at some institutions are de rigueur on a first visit, so we spent a rainy afternoon at the British Museum, where the curators have wisely made a list called "One Hour at the British Museum" to accommodate visitors with little time — or short attention spans. We were able to see such treasures as the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Sculptures and the Samuri armor and still have time for a cup of hot chocolate before heading to Baker Street and the digs of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.
We had the good luck of being able to stay with friends who live in Essex and sent us off each morning with emergency supplies of water, tissues and chocolate. They also drove us to the train station and explained that morning peak hours (what we would call rush hour) end at 9:30, so most days found us on the much less expensive 9:32 headed for Liverpool Street Station. Once there, we could catch the Underground and be anywhere we wanted to go within minutes.
One such morning found us at the Tower of London, with a guide, slangily called a "Beefeater," telling us lively legends about the historical figures who had been imprisoned and executed within its stone walls. The official name of these guides, we learned, is Yeoman Warders, and despite their ability to entertain with funny and frightening tales, they are all retired military men who earned the privilege of working here with their exemplary records.
To give the girls a different perspective of the city we took a water taxi on the Thames to the London Eye for a ride that gave us a bird's-eye view of many famous landmarks, such as the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, where we would go later for the changing of the guard.
From there we walked across Westminster Bridge, past Big Ben and on to Covent Garden for dinner before going to the theater. Again aiming for our teenage audience, we had booked tickets for two musicals. The one we saw that night at the Aldwych was "Beautiful," the story of Carole King's songwriting and singing career interspersed with her many hits. Another night we would see "Kinky Boots" at the Adelphi. This spectacle of color featured music written by Cyndi Lauper and an uplifting message to take away at the end.
We started one day with a visit to the Churchill War Rooms. These were constructed under the Treasury building in 1938-39 to house the British government during World War II and then preserved as a museum when the war was over. Some of the space is devoted to Prime Minister Winston Churchill's private life, as well.
Later we toured Westminster Abbey so the girls could see Poets' Corner, where some of the writers they have studied were buried. A hidden surprise here was the Cellarium Cafe and Terrace, the part of the abbey that was used for storing the monks' food as far back as the 14th century. Today it's a cozy restaurant with afternoon tea on offer all day, and that's what we had for lunch. Each of us was served with a tiered stand that held tiny sandwiches, appetizing cakes, and scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam.
Fortified with all that, we took our 15-year-old fashionista down Carnaby Street to see the trendy boutiques and to the Liberty department store where Princess Diana once shopped and which Carly, our Potterphile, said reminded her of Hogwarts. In fact, just a few days earlier our English friends had given her — and us — the surprise of a visit to the Warner Bros. studios just outside London where all of the Potter movies were filmed. At Platform 9 3/4 in Kings Cross Station she had been photographed pushing a luggage trolley through the wall in hopes of catching the Hogwarts Express.
One of her mother's memorable experiences had been an evening Jack the Ripper walk through London's East End, and even here there was a Potter connection since we walked down the street that had been Diagon Alley in the movies. The girls enjoyed the lively guide who wound us past fragrant curry shops and into dark alleys where the villain's victims had been found during August and September of 1888. Many of the original Victorian houses and pubs have been replaced by brightly lit buildings, but our clever guide used a gadget she called "Rippervision" to project police photos of the crimes onto the buildings' walls and to show what the space looked like 128 years ago.
Other days we ventured out into the countryside to Windsor Castle — where the flag fluttering atop the structure indicated the queen was in residence — and to Hampton Court Palace, where Henry VIII lived with all of his six wives. The Roman ruins in Bath intrigued the girls with the layers of history that have been excavated back to Celtic and Roman times, but it was Stonehenge that made the biggest impression on Maggie.
"It might not be most teenagers' favorite," she said, "but it made me aware of the passage of so much time."
Her sister's favorite experience had been the Ripper walk.
"I liked it that we were outside doing something, walking and exploring," she said.
We ended our time in England with a visit to the neighborhood where we had lived and the school my daughter had attended. We also took the girls to Harrods for a little bit of shopping and to Piccadilly Circus to see that young people still gather there with their friends just as my daughter had with hers.
We also brought closure to a disappointment we had experienced on our first visit. I had taken a picture of my daughter walking on the famous zebra crossing the Beatles had used for one of their album covers, but the drugstore lost the film so we never got to see the photo. This time our friend Martin came along to be our photographer, and while traffic stopped he snapped an even better picture — three generations of Beatles-lovers having the time of their lives in Abbey Road.
WHEN YOU GO
For general information: www.visitbritain.com
British Museum: www.britishmuseum.org
Tower of London: www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london
London Eye: www.londoneye.com
Churchill War Rooms: www.iwm.org/visits/churchill-war-rooms
Westminster Abbey: www.westminster-abbey.org
Jack the Ripper and other historic walks through London: www.walks.com
For a variety of coach tours to sites outside London: www.evanevanstours.com
Hampton Court Palace: www.hrp.org.uk/hampton.court.palace
Glenda Winders and Lesley Sauls are freelance writers. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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