World Trip

Thursday 31st July
Today we visited Westminster Abbey. Westminister Abbey is one of the worlds oldest and most famous churches. Every King and Queen of England has been crowned here since 1066 and it also the place of famous weddings. Many famous people are buried in the abbey including Isaac Newton the man who ‘discovered’ gravity using an apple, and famous kings and queens of England including Queen Elizabeth I.

Since the Abbey is an active church, you are not allowed to take pictures inside the Abbey so the following photos have come from the internet.

Lady Chapel- oldest part of the Abbey with a very ornate ceiling.

Tomb of Newton

Tomb of Queen Elizabeth I

Miss Hannaford and I did a special tour of the Abbey with one of the Abbey staff and so we got to see a very special place in the Abbey right behind the altar- the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor. St Edward was the very first King of England and every King and Queen is crowned with St Edward’s crown while sitting in the ancient Coronation Chair which dates back to the building of the Abbey.

Shrine of St Edward the Confessor

Coronation Chair

After visiting the Abbey, the next place we went to was Kensington Palace. This is the palace where Prince William, Katherine and Baby Prince George live some of the time. It is also the childhood home of Queen Victoria so there is a big statue of the Queen outside of the entrance to the palace.

Inside the palace there are several exhibitions. A really interesting exhibition was how the palace was used during the reign of King George II including actors playing the part of the King and Queen and some of the Lords and Ladies who attended their court. George II reigned as King from 1727 to 1760. I got to see how the Queen got dressed in her enormous dress! The dress is wider than the doorways so when the Queen moved from room to room- she has to go through the door sideways!

The palace walls are covered in huge paintings that start on the wall and go all the way up and across the ceilings and there is lots of gold everywhere as it was important that the King impresses visitors to his court with his wealth and power.

One of the other really interesting things we saw was a painting of Queen Victoria wearing a red military uniform and riding a horse inspecting the troops. The King or Queen of England is also the head of the military. Beside the painting in an exhibition case was the actual uniform Queen Victoria was wearing in the painting as well as her saddle. That uniform was over 150 years old! The photos are really dark because the objects are very old and light from a camera flash can harm very old objects by fading the colour or breaking down cloth fibres.

It was a very busy day and we need our rest for tomorrow’s adventure!
-Lucy

Wednesday 30th July
Today Miss Hannaford achieved one of her life goals- to visit the world famous British Museum! The British Museum has one of the worlds best collections of Ancient Egyptian objects outside of Egypt as well as objects from every ancient civilisations as well as a few items from indigenous Australia.

Among the objects we found inside the British Museum was another Moai head just like Dum Dum from New York.

We also found huge door posts from the Palace of Xerxes. How many feet can you count on the statue?

Here are some of the other objects in the Museum but there is so much to see that Miss Hannaford will have to come back on another day.

To top the day off, another thing London is famous for is the red double decker buses. Miss Hannaford and I decided to use the bus to go back to the hotel and we got to sit right at the very front of the bus and we took this photo.

It was a great, historical day and lets see what adventure we will go on tomorrow- Lucy

Tuesday 29th July

Today we got to see traditional British pomp and ceremony- the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. During summer, the changing of the guard happens everyday at 11:30am. All of the guards from one of the 5 regiments (Grenediers, Colstream, Scots, Irish or Welsh) guards all of the palaces around London for 24 hours. A guard will stand on duty for 2 hours then have 2 hours off so every guard stands on duty 12 times including at night. The weapons they are carrying are real and they are loaded. These guards are real professional soldiers not just a tourist attraction. Every tourist who comes to London goes to see the Changing of the Guard which meant we ended up a long way back from the Palace but the guards did march past us on their way to the palace.

http://youtu.be/JPsTqfqfPIY

After the changing of the guard ceremony, Miss Hannaford and I walked to Covent Garden. Covent Garden is where all the famous theaters in London start as Miss Hannaford needed to collect her tickets to see Phantom of the Opera.
Miss Hannaford originally saw Phantom of the Opera in 1991 in Melbourne then again in Sydney in 1996. It is one of her favourite musicals and she is currently building a ‘phantom’ puppet.

Also in Covent Garden is a very old and famous shop called Benjamin Pollocks Toy Theatre. They sell lots of puppet theaters in this shop including reproductions of antique cardboard theatres so Miss Hannaford has bought a few to bring back home.

As we walked to the theatre, we saw the most amazing building- it is nearly completely covered in hanging baskets of flowers- very pretty!

Other locations we visited during the day included the Albert Memorial- a special statue dedicated to the memory of Prince Albert- husband of Queen Victoria and across the road is the Albert Hall- a very famous concert hall.

Here are some photos of the stage of phantom of the opera at the beginning of the musical and the end of the musical. Did you know that the chandelier actually falls to the stage during the show?

Miss Hannaford told me about her favourite memory of the show when she saw it in 1991. She went to see where the orchestra plays at the front of the stage and the conductor had written on his music the word DUCK at the point when the chandelier falls. If he didn’t duck- the chandelier would hit him! Here is what it looks like in the show-
http://youtu.be/7r_tU1323sg

So what a very interesting day- let’s see what adventures we go on tomorrow!
– Lucy

Monday 28th July
Today Miss Hannaford and I travelled 35 minutes out of London by train to Hampton Court Palace. This palace is famous because it was the main palace where Henry VIII lived as well as his daughter Queen Elizabeth I. Miss Hannaford is really interested in this period of English history called Tudor England. So much of our history was changed at this palace 500 years ago!

As you walk into the palace- you can see 8 animals holding heraldic shields representing the family crests of Henry and of his third wife Jane Seymour.

One thing I noticed as we walked through the gatehouse was a sign on the wall. I thought someone had spelt gatehouse wrong but apparently that is how the letter U was written during the reign of Henry and Elizabeth.

When you visit Hampton Court Palace, you are given a free audio guide machine to borrow and you can choose different tours if the palace. The first tour we chose was a tour of Henry VIII’s kitchens because we could smell delicious roasting meat in the courtyard! Henry’s kitchen is enormous! A royal court of the King, Queen, Lords and Ladies and servants is many hundreds of people so the kitchens have to be able to cook lots of food for them all! The fire place where the meat is cooked is so big that whole animals can be spit roasted!

The next space we got to see was the Great Hall where the King and all his court would eat their feasts. Have you ever heard of the word eavesdropper- someone who listens to private conversations? That word started in this room! At the bottom of the arches on the roof of the Great Hall- at the bottom of the Eaves are little carved and painted wooden heads called Eavesdroppers.

In one of the other rooms, we actually encountered an actor playing Henry VIII so it made our visit really interesting because the actor was expecting everyone to bow to him and call him your majesty and you can see that the ceiling in the room is covered in real gold!

200 years after Henry VIII died, George I started to demolish Hampton Court Palace from the back and built a completely different style of palace but he ran out of money to finish demolishing the rest of the old palace so it is very strange walking through a door in Henry’s Palace into a completely different kind of palace.

While we visited the other half of Hampton Court Palace we saw examples of the kinds of clothes people wore at the court of King George. We also ran into more actors playing Prince George and Princess Caroline who lived at the palace and they took us on a tour of the building and later gardens.

One of the special features of the garden of Hampton Court Palace is the maze made of living plants. It was too wet and muddy to go into the maze but it was possible to take photos of how the gardeners grow the maze as they are adding to the maze right now.

Sunday 27th July
Today Miss Hannaford and I visited one of London’s oldest and most famous landmarks- the Tower of London. The Tower of London is officially known as Her Majesty’s Palace and Fortress but it is also known as the place where the Crown Jewels are kept as well as a prison and a place where people’s heads were cut off over 500 years ago.

The Tower of London was where the Kings and Queens of England used to live which is why it looks like a castle. It has a moat that used to have water in it and once you cross the moat, you can see where the portcullis with it’s long spikes goes up and down using rope wound around a crank to stop enemies from entering the castle. When we visited, teams of volunteers were putting clay poppies into the ground of the moat for the commemoration of the centenary of World War 1 in 1914. By November 11 2014, there will be 1 poppy for every British solider killed in the First World War.

Since the Tower of London is the place where the Crown Jewels of England are kept, there are 2 groups of soldiers guarding them. The first group come from either the Grenediers, Colstream, Irish. Scots or Welsh Guards who wear the red uniforms and actual Bearskin hats. The hats are made from real Canadian black bears. These soldiers guard all the palaces and they also serve in the British army. The other group of guards are known as Yeoman Warders. They live 24/7 at the Tower with their families and they are retired soldiers but they wear a uniform design that is 500 years old.

The Crown Jewels are kept in the Jewel House within the grounds of the Tower of London. All the famous crowns wore by the Queen and past Kings and Queens are kept here as well as many of the objects used in the coronation.
http://youtu.be/z7qdzzhxxPY

The most important building in the grounds of the Tower of London is the White Tower. Here is where Kings and Queens lived over many centuries. Inside the tower is a display of suits of armour belonging to all the ancient kings- queens never wore armour. We got to see armour worn by King Henry VIII, as well as many different kinds of weapons that were stored at the Tower of London.

The photo just above shows how much a knight wearing armour could actually see- which is not very much. The exhibition designers at the the Tower of London had cut a helmet in half so you could put your face in to see what the knights could not see!

The tower is also known as a place of execution. 6 people including 3 Queens of England had their head cut off by either an axe or a sword inside the tower grounds on Tower Green while hundreds had their head cut off on the hill just behind the tower. Their heads were cut off if they had been judged and found guilty of the most serious of crimes- treason against the king. Many innocent as well as guilty people had their head cut off. One of the axes and blocks is on display in the Tower of London and a sculpture has been set up on Tower Green to remember the innocent people whose heads were cut off.

One of the unusual things about the Tower of London is that Ravens are always kept at the Tower. The superstition is that if the ravens leave the tower, the tower will fall and the monachy will end. 300 years ago, the English King decreed that the Yeoman Warders must always keep at least 8 Ravens at the Tower of London at all times. The Ravens are allowed to go wherever they like but their flight feathers are trimmed so they can’t fly away.

After our visit to the Tower of London, Miss Hannaford and I went on a cruise on the River Thames to the London Eye. We saw Tower Bridge again, a strange new building called the Shard and eventually the London Eye- a huge Ferris wheel on the bank of the river.

Our last stop of the day was a ride on the London Eye! It takes 30 minutes to go all the way around the wheel and the view of London is amazing!

It has been a very exciting day- I am really looking forward to what we are doing tomorrow!- Lucy

Day 29: Saturday 26th July
London is a very big place. In Sydney, 4.5 million people live in Sydney but there are more than 9 million people living in London and it can be scary in such a big city when you don’t know it. So Miss Hannaford and I went on a special bus tour of London. The top of the bus had no roof so we could see the sights easily.

The first thing we saw was Westminster Abbey. The abbey is one of the biggest churches in the world and it is where the King or Queen of England is crowned. The present Queen is Queen Elizabeth II and she was crowned here in June 1953.

Right next door to Westminster Abbey is the Palace of Westminster where the British Parliament meets. The most famous part of the parliament building is the tower, which in 2012 was officially named the Queen Elizabeth Tower. The world knows the tower by another name- Big Ben. The name Big Ben doesn’t refer to the tower but the largest bell inside the tower that chimes the hour.

The next stop on the tour was Horseguards Parade. This is a big open square area with buildings on 3 sides. The soldiers who are on guard here for the Queen, sit on horses and wear very shiny armour. Some of the soldiers where red coats under their armour and have white horse tails coming out of their helmets and the other soldiers wear blue coats under their amour and have red string coming out of their helmets.

The next stop was Trafalgar Square. This place is very famous in London because it has a really big column in the middle of it with a man standing on top of it. The column is called Nelson’s Column and the man standing on it is Admiral Horatio Nelson who defeated the French and Spanish fleets at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805- one of England’s most decisive naval battles.

Our next stop was to travel over Tower Bridge. Many people think of this bridge when they hear the song London Bridge is falling down but that is a different bridge in London. This famous bridge is called Tower Bridge because it is right next to the famous Tower of London.

Here is a video Miss Hannaford made while we travelled over Tower Bridge!

Once we crossed the bridge, the tour finished back at Buckingham Palace so Miss Hannaford and I decided to visit one of the last palaces in Europe where the King or Queen actually live! The Queen was away on her holiday in Scotland so members of the public are allowed to visit the palace. We started by looking at her horses and carriages in the Royal Mews. Mews is another word for stable. We even saw the Gold Coronation Coach that is only used for coronations. It is completely covered in gold and it weighs 4 tonnes! It is on display with 4 models of horses harnessed to it but it actually takes 8 horses to pull that coach and because it is so heavy, the horses can only get the coach to move at walking pace!

http://youtu.be/T4Rojv5ok-8
After visiting the Royal Mews, Miss Hannaford and I walked around to the front of the palace to see the Queen Victoria Memorial- the tall white sculpture with a gold angel on the top that is always seen outside the front of the palace on tv. We were also able to walk right up to the gates that the queen uses when she leaves and returns to the palace.

Our last stop of the day was to actually to go inside Buckingham Palace and see the state apartments where the Queen actually entertains her guests. We went into the throne room and through the grand ballroom. Every room is decorated with lots of gold and very expensive ornaments and furniture. You are not allowed to take pictures inside the palace but I found these ones on the internet so you can see what we saw.

When you walk out of the State Apartments you walk into the Queen’s back garden. Many people dream of having tea with the Queen at the palace and the palace has set up a cafe on the back terrace of the palace so you can say you had tea at the palace! Miss Hannaford really enjoyed her cup of tea and a royal cake followed by a walk through the Queen’s garden on the way to the exit.

Thursday 24th and Friday 25th July
The past two days, Miss Hannaford and I have been travelling from New York to London, the capital city of England. It took a long time because New York traffic is very busy and the roads have lots of cars and buses which means you have to allow 3 hours to get to the airport from the city. It is also very important to allow at least another 3 hours to get through check in and security at the airport so it is very important to be patient and to bring something to do to pass the time.

While we were waiting at the gate for our plane- we saw how a really big plane used for international flights is moved away from the airport terminal using a really big push truck.

The flight to London was 7 hours and you also have to allow that you have to change your watch 5 hours ahead so we arrived at our hotel on Friday afternoon. Here is a view out the window of the plane.

Miss Hannaford is really excited to be in London so I can’t wait to see where we go first!- Lucy

Day 25: Tuesday 22nd July
Today started with a visit to a New York Fire Station which are called Fire Houses. The fire house we visited today is famous because it was used in the film Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2. It still has the special ghost sign that was hung outside of the building during the movie on the wall inside. It is still a working fire house even though it is famous so we saw the huge fire engine inside.

The next place we visited was Rockefeller Centre. The centre is made up of several famous buildings and has featured on television and movies many times and one of America’s biggest TV networks has their studios in the building called 30 Rockefeller Centre called “30 Rock” for short.

There is a fantastic flower sculpture out the front of 30 Rock called Split Rocker by the artist Jeff Koons. Half of the sculpture is the head of a cute dinosaur rocker and the other half is the head of a rocking horse. The whole sculpture is covered by millions of real growing flowering plants.

Day 26: Wednesday 23rd July
Today is our last full day in New York and in America! Since we are flying to our next country tomorrow and there are limits on how much luggage you can take on the plane, Miss Hannaford and I went to a nearby postoffice to send home our souvenirs to Australia. We then caught the subway train downtown as Miss Hannaford wanted to see Grand Central Terminal because it had featured in many movies that Miss Hannaford had seen.

Very few of the subway stations have lifts, so there are lots of stairs to climb and sometimes it can be confusing which stairs to go up to get to where you want to go to. Miss Hannaford went up the wrong staircase when we got off the train but unexpectedly we ended up in the lobby of a very famous building that Miss Hannaford has wanted to see for 15 years- the lobby of the Chrysler building! Miss Hannaford wanted to see it because the design of the lobby and the elevator doors use lots of ancient Egyptian symbols. Even the outside of the building at the very top looks like a giant papyrus flower from ancient Egypt!

We then walked around the corner and found the entrance of Grand Central Terminal. It is just like our Central Station in Sydney in that lots of special trains start or finish long journeys to other states. The difference from our Central station is that Grand Central is many times bigger! It has more than 100 platforms and one whole side of the Grand Concourse is an Apple Store!

Our last stop for the day was the main branch of the New York Public Library. Miss Hannaford wanted to see it for 2 reasons- the first reason was that it is a Library and she wanted to see the activities that this library offered visitors but it was also used during the filming of the original Ghostbusters movie. Miss Hannaford really likes that movie so she wanted to see many of the filming locations that still exisit.

It was a really hot day, so we went back to the hotel to rest and then Miss Hannaford arranged for us to watch Ghostbusters on her ipad!

Tomorrow is another travelling day when we leave the United States of America and fly to London, England! Can’t wait to see what is next on this big adventure! – Lucy

Day 23: Sunday 20th July
Today Miss Hannaford and I caught the subway train to the Museum of Natural History. The film Night at the Museum was based on this museum especially the Easter Island Moai head, the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the special dioramas. Some of the scenes were filmed in the actual museum! You walk into the museum and the main entry hall is full of real dinosaur skeletons!

We decided to go on a free tour of the building because the Museum of Natural History is made up of 27 buildings and can be very difficult to find the places you want to go. The first stop on the tour was the 2 huge Dinosaur halls where we got to touch a real Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth and one of the plates of a Stegosaurus!

The next stop was the hall of African Mammals where we saw the special dioramas that were in the movie including the elephants! The animals on display are real animals that were once alive, but now their skins have been taxidermied so that they can be displayed forever.

After our tour, Miss Hannaford and I went looking for the big Moai head that says Dum Dum want Gum Gum! The Moai head from Easter Island is in the Hall of Pacific People along with artefacts from Indigenous Australians and puppets from Indonesia!

http://youtu.be/Bub_EJnG9Kw

After the Museum of Natural History, Miss Hannaford and I walked down the street to find a building made famous in the film Ghostbusters. It is 55 Central Park West and in the movie it was called Spook Central. We then went for a walk through the park which is bigger than any park in Sydney to find 2 special park benches. All the park benches in Central Park have little plaques dedicated to the memory of people and the bench that Miss Hannaford was looking for in particular was the bench dedicated to the Joyful life of Jim Henson.

One of the special things you can do in the park is go for a ride in horse drawn carriage! It was lots of fun and we got to feed carrots to the horse at the end of the ride!
http://youtu.be/kqTzDmYNahU

Day 24: Monday 21st July
Our first stop of the day was the Guggenheim Museum! This building was designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the building is an art gallery. The round part of the building is one long spiralling ramp and all of the artwork faces the ramp so they are hung on a slope too! Being a famous art gallery, you are not allowed to take pictures of the artwork above the ground floor but you are allowed to take pictures of the building looking up from the ground floor so you can see the spiral of the building.

After the seeing all the artwork at the Guggenheim museum, we walked down the street to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This museum has one of the largest collections of Ancient Egyptian artefacts outside of Egypt. It even has a real Egyptian temple that takes up a huge hall and it has a real pond around it!

Our next activity was to visit the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park. Children are encouraged to climb on this sculpture and sit with Alice on the mushroom or to sit with the Mad Hatter or the Door mouse with his silly poem.

Right next to the sculpture is a really big pond where there are lots of little yachts that you can have a go at sailing using a remote control. The yachts are powered by the wind so the trick was to get the rudder of the yacht and the sail in the right place to catch the wind and move the boat. Miss Hannaford did ok- she managed to get her boat to move sometimes fast and sometimes not at all. It is really important to keep trying and be patient!

So much fun and I am really looking forward to tommorow! – Lucy

Day 21: Friday 18th July
Today was so exciting! Miss Hannaford and I went on a bus tour of New York City where we could get on and off the bus whenever and where ever we wanted! Our first stop was at the Empire State Building- the 26th tallest building in the world at the moment but it was the tallest building for 40 years!
You can take a series of elevators to the 68th floor where there is an observation deck so you can see all of New York!

Our next stop was Battery Park where you catch the ferry boat across New York Harbour to Liberty Island. Liberty Island is where the Statue of Liberty stands! We walked all the way around her so we could see her back as well as her front!

After our visit to the Statue of Liberty, Miss Hannaford and I continued our bus tour around the lower half of Manhatten Island. We saw the United Nations building, the Chrysler building, and Grand Central Terminal which looks just like our Central station in Sydney!

We later did a night time bus tour so we could see what the famous building looked like! The buildings were very pretty!

Day 22: Saturday 19th July
Today Miss Hannaford and I did a different bus tour of ‘Uptown’ New York. The first place we got off the bus was a part of Central Park called Strawberry Fields named after the famous song by the Beatles. This area of park is dedicated to the memory of John Lennon- one of the members of the Beatles because this area of the park is across the road from the building where John Lennon lived and where he was killed on December 8th, 1980. The Strawberry Fields is a very quiet part of the park and the memorial has one simple word from one of John Lennon’s songs: Imagine.

After visiting Strawberry Fields, we got back on the bus and toured around Northern New York all day. We drove past the Museum of Natural History where the film A Night at the Museum was based, the famous white Guggenheim musem, then past the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

That night Miss Hannaford went to see the Lion King on Broadway with all it’s amazing puppets and masks! Some of the puppets and costumes are on display just before you go into the theatre!

Miss Hannaford sat on the edge of the isle so when the animal puppets come through the audience at different times- they brushed her!
http://youtu.be/_0OdIcCQG9I

I am really looking forward to our next adventure tomorrow!- Lucy