London Day 4

Tuesday April 9, 2019

Today we drove out to the Roald Dahl museum with the Wheelers. It was about a 45 minute drive from their place. The museum was very busy due to Easter Holiday, which apparently is 2 weeks long in these parts. Claire really enjoyed the museum. They gave her a booklet to fill out, and she busied herself drawing dreams in the BFG’s dream jars. The museum was designed so well for kids – there were areas to do dress ups, crafts, and many interactive displays. There were a lot of Matilda-themed activities in honor of the book’s 30^th anniversary. I didn’t realize that Roald Dahl had written Matilda so late in his life! The museum also contained a representation of Dahl’s writing hut and a replica of the chair he sat in to write. Dahl wrote on a desk with the green felt from a billiard’s table on top, with a rolled-up tube of corrugated cardboard underneath to get the writing table at just the right angle.

The door even smelled like chocolate!

Claire is as tall as one Oompa Loompa!

Roald Dahl's writing hut

Filling the BFG's jars with dreams

Listening to the dream she recorded

Claire's costume choice and pose

Replica of Dahl's chair

Arts and crafts

We took a rest in the afternoon, then headed to the neighboring town of St. Alban’s in the afternoon. We saw the 600 year old clock tower and then walked over to the cathedral. It was giant and quite impressive. St. Alban’s cathedral is very old. Construction on it started in the 11^th century and it is the oldest …. in England. What added to our experience was that as soon as we opened the cathedral doors, we heard the organ playing and a choir singing – we were just in time to hear the choir practice! There were some very faded frescoes on the walls from the 1200s and lots of stained glass. Some parts of the cathedral were newer; a series of circular stained glass on one wall was added in the past decade or two. Interestingly, all of the crosses in the cathedral were draped and covered in purple cloths which happens the last couple weeks of Lent. From what I understand, this is done to make you notice/remember them more.

Clock tower

St Alban's

After leaving the cathedral we walked to the neighboring park, Verulamium Park. The Park contains Roman ruins although we didn’t get a very close look at them. Mostly we let the kids just run around and play. One of the key features of the park is a large pond with swans and a walking/jogging path around the circumference. Apparently all of the swans in the UK belong to the Queen. The kids had fun chasing birds and playing “Harry Potter”.

Apparently they had arms around each other since they were under an invisibility cloak

Steve met us for dinner at the neighboring pub, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks. It is one of a few pubs which claims to be the oldest in England. I ended up getting fish and chips again so that Claire could try it. The chips were super chunky, perhaps over an inch in thickness in both directions. Claire and Mark both chose bangers and mash. Claire loved hers and devoured her sausage. I’m guessing she’ll end up ordering it again before we leave!