Day 6

Our last day in London. We went to the British Library where we saw a Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, Beatles lyrics, Sheakesphere's signature on a bill of sale for his house, and they had a special exhibit on sacred texts (the Bible, Torah and Koran). It was so neat to be able to see these old manuscripts. Of course we especially enjoyed the Bible texts, one of which was a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Kim also enjoyed seeing the Magna Carta and Gutenberg Bible since she taught her students about them last year.
Next, we went to the British Museum. We only spent two hours there, we want to go back just to spend some more time at the museum. They have so much to see there. There are lots of things from Egypt, Assyria and other old civilizations. We saw mummies, statues from the Parthenon in Athens, stone carvings from Assyria, shields from the Celts, and many other fun old things. We had a great guide who helped us see the highlights of the museum.
We had a full day's schedule so we had to leave the museum right after our tour. We ate lunch at a yummy pizza place and headed to Buckingham Palace. At first Micah and I were not going to go to the palace because it was so expensive, but we heard from others that they enjoyed it and they thought it was worth going. We decided to go and we are glad we did. It is only open in the summer because the queen is on vacation. We got an audioguide with our tour and it was fun listening to the commentary as we went through the beautiful rooms. It is amazing how elaborate the rooms are, they are gorgeous. I wish we could have taken pictures inside! It is also the 60th wedding anniversary of the queen and prince. We saw her wedding dress, jewelry, video of the wedding and some wedding presents. I enjoyed our tour there.
After the palace we had just enough time to go back to the hotel to get changed, catch a quick dinner at a Pret a Manger and then head to the theatre for Phantom of the Opera. Before we left for our trip we bought tickets online to go to Phantom. We have never seen it live and thought London would be the place to see it. It was a lot of fun seeing it, although we were way up in the nose bleed section. But it was still amazing!