sight-seeing in London

Welcome to Big Time Literacy and the #BTBC14! We're celebrating the one year blog-o-versary of Big Time Literacy with a month long blogging challenge. Link up with me each day and network your blog with all those participating, including the seven new D100 bloggers!

It's really been great seeing everyone comment on one another's blogs... If you post at the very beginning of the day, you can always go back to the previous day's blogs and comment on the bloggers who posted late in the evening! Comments are such great encouragement and make blogging really worth it! :-)

Just came back from my first trip to Europe and it was amazing! I went with Education First (EF). They plan trips with teachers and students, and I went with my best friend, Heather, and five of her students.

EF books trips so that there are about 40-45 kids all together, since we share a coach as we travel around some of the cities. Our group included me, Heather, and her five kids from San Diego, a group from Texas, and a third group from North Carolina. Then, all of us together got a tour director to guide us at each city and from place to place!

Rosaria, our director, and our group!

We began our trip in London. Because of some baggage issues, we got off to a late start, but on our first day there, we took a brief walking tour by Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings. We saw the London Eye and then walked to Trafalgar Square. Here's a few pics:

It's Big Ben! (I am pretty sure that name is because of the bell at the top...but maybe I'm wrong!)

Selfie with Big Ben!

And, seeing Big Ben from the London Eye:

Speaking of the London Eye...

It's now actually called something else, because a different company bought it. Kinda like the Sears Tower is now the Willis Tower? (It will forever be the Sears Tower to me, though!) HA --->

I was seeing a lot of red in London!

Mailboxes are easy to find!

And Trafalgar Square:

Okay, going to try and decipher some of the notes about Trafalgar Square in my phone...This is a plaza with a few water fountains and a bunch of statues of monarch type guys - and one big statue of a blue chicken...do you see it in the pic above?

Well, in the square there is a statue of the first monarch of England, Charles the First. This guy ended up getting beheaded, I think when the monarchy was overthrown? So they took his statue down while that was so, but then when the monarchy came back, the statue went back up. Now, the statue faces down the street to the place where King Charles was beheaded. Interesting, right?

So then the blue chicken story --
(Got this pic from Google!)

Not sure who started it all, but some artist was upset that all the statues around this town square were of the monarch-government guys, so this platform now rotates artists who get to display there. Pretty sure they display for a year at a time, and this is the current art that is up there. Not sure why it's a blue chicken or any significance of it, but it's a good meeting place. "Hey, meet me at the blue chicken in Trafalgar Square!"

I guess there was one artist who thought lots of people should have access to the platform, so for his year, he let different groups of people do dance or do similar forms of art each week. Kinda cool, right?

What I didn't know about Europe that I think is so cool are all the town squares. Every city we visited had squares all around for people to gather and hang out or share a picnic or even watch the World Cup! I love the town squares and think it would be cool if we had something like that over here!

Anyways, enough about me. Time for you to link up! Hope you had a great holiday!

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