Top 10 Amazing London Activities

My Top 10 List of things to do and see in London will not be everyone's cup of tea, but it would please me to visit each and every one of them. After that tour, I have a friend near London that would show me hundreds of sights and attractions as well. I am sure I would want to move th London after that!

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My father's family lived originally in England, with a large cadre located in and around London. Their surname was spelled English.However, before about 1760, only female line can be traced further back and this is back to the Terrells, also spelled Tirrel, Terell, Tyrell, and otherwise. This group of family also resided in and around London and elsewhere in what is now the UK.

The name Tyrell means Thunder Ruler and that sounds about right, from what I know of the family down through the generations.

It is the Tirrells that are very distantly related to the Royal Stuarts. They and their descendants can wear a dress dagger with a Stuart crest upon its hilt when they are in full kit (Sottish or Irish Kilt and accessories).

At some point in the late 1700s, the particular English-surnamed family that are my ancestors split. Some went to Ireland (not Northern Ireland) and took the name Inglish, meaning an Englishman living in a foreign land, and some migrated to Scotland and also took the surname Inglish. Some stayed in London and kept English. In the early 1800s, some of the related immigrants in Ireland, some in Scotland, and a few in London all immigrated to America.

Many of all three arms of the clan settled in eastern Ohio and Pennsylvania, but mostly in Ohio. I have found the surname Inglish across the west of America, roughly along old Route 66 all the way to California, but noe of those descendants have genealogical records back past the 1900s, as far as I have been able to determine at this date.

Be this as it may, I lean toward believing that some of the Inglish clan that was transplanted to Ireland and then to America, worked their ways west to California on the US Railroads, alongside native Irishmen and Chinese workers. They likely never admitted to being Irish, because of of the racial, actually ethnic, stigma mounted against them from the 18th - early 20th century.

Although they had lived in Ireland, my great great grandfather and his two brothers maintained that they were from England in the early 1800s (the family generally lived to be very old). He went on to fight for the Union Army in the American Civil War, for Ohio, and his regiment's flag hangs in the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. He then went to Madison County in west Central Ohio and set up a machine shop where he made tools and equipment to be used on the National Road, Route 40. His son was born the year he died, 1870 and became my grandfather (lived to be 89 and outlived three wives). The son went back to eastern Ohio, where he owned farms and worked on Route 40 in Guernsey County.

Because all of my family is deceased now, I would like to know if any remain in the UK and Ireland. Thus my first visit in London would be to any place that has

1) Genealogical Records.

Old Wren Church, attic

9, St Thomas Street, SE1

This operating room was first constructed for the hospital known as Guy's and Thomas's Hospital. Florence Nightengale is said to have worked in this operating theater. There is also a wonderful her garret attached to the operatory and the herbs have been used in health and medicine for centuries. That brings me to another place I want to visit:

3) Chelsea Physic Garden

66 Royal Hospital Road

London SW3 4HS, UK

This garden is promoted as the second botanical garden built in England in order to produce medicinal remedies. Bees are also kept and honey produced -- also a good natural remedy and preventative.

An Uncle in America kept bees and this skill was handed down through the generations from England.

Greenwich

London SE10 9NF

This is a large campus of exhibits that include over 2,000,000 items and artifacts from seafaring days as well as atronomy. The collection seems to take the visitor from before the Tall Ship to the Space Station.

Favorite lines from Sea Fever, by John Masefield

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by...

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying...

To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife...

Psalms, 107:23-25

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;

These see the works of the LORD, and his wonders in the deep.

Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG

The British Museum looks to be a huge complex of exhibits, including Cleopatra's mummy and the Rosetta Stone. Wonders of the world are hosued in this museum's exhibits. The Elgin marbles (Pantheon marble statuary) are said to be breathtaking.

University College London

Gower Street - London - WC1E 6BT

and

UCL's Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

Malet Place, London WC1E 6BT

The University College of London actually houses several Museums and I would like to start with the Egyptian Archaelogy and also visit the Art Collections, Museum of Zoology, and the Ethnographic Collection.

A tour of the full campus would be extraordinary.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum

221b Baker Street

London England Tel: 0207-935-8866

Open every day of the year except Christmas.

I had not read Sherlock Holmes stories until after I had read several pastiche works that I enjoyed and had seen Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in the classic films. The I saw a few older black and white Homles films bu other actors and a more modern stage production starring Frank Langella as the detective. Then came Jeremy Brett as Holmes and - so sad to me - Brett died much too early. I am waiting for the next Holmes to appear like Doctor Who.

What hooked me on the orinigals written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyles were a set of old radio episodes listened to by a little boy that grew up to transcribe the stories into book format. I loved the book, listened to a few of the old episodes and then began reading the Doyle originals. How thunderstruck I was to learn that The Five Orange Pips dealt with the Ku Lux Klan and that Holmes dealt them back some of their own behaviors. I've been reading ever since.

Holmes Quotes:

In my profession all sorts of odd knowledge comes useful, and this room of yours is a storehouse of it.

Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.

The Crime Museum at Scotland Yard would be a good addition to this visit; unfortunately, it is no longer open to the public.

Westminster Abbey

London, SW1P 3PA

Evensong is a worship service held in the evenings at Westminster Abbey, built in 1065.

The choir that sings at these services is made up of Choristers actually educated in choral music and voice at the Westminster Abbey Choir School. It would make for a very refreshing and renewing time before dinner at a fine London restaurant.

5pm Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays

3pm Saturdays and Sundays.

Covent Garden Life in the Heart of London

I gave up shopping long ago when American malls became first, over crowded, then in some areas, dilapidated and full of street gangs in the weekends. Out city cancelled the bus service to all the malls in the 1990s. Now, busses sstop one or two blocks away form each mall but will venture no further. At one fo the more plush malls, the bus stops across the highway overpass at a WalMart and you have to walk two blocks to the overpass and then three blocks across it on a narrow sidewalk and another two blocks to the mall. Further, it's difficult to drive there, because it is always crowded and the lots very full.

However, Covent Garden looks fun to experience, at least for one day.

House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA

House of Lords, London, SW1A 0PW

Since American law was based on English law since the 13 Colonies were orignally founded, I would like to visit as much of Parliament as possible. This might include activities of debates, committees, hearings, and a visit to the Parliament Archives.

While we're at it, I would then like to visit the Central Criminal Court, becuase I have recently begun to read Sir John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey series and could not put the book I chose down until I was finished with the last story.

Central Criminal Court

Old Bailey

London

EC4M 7EH

Tel 020 7248 3277

After visiting these Top 10 Picks and many other fascinating and important sights in London with friends, I would like to do one last thing in London.

I would most like to end my trip with a train journey from London to Liverpool, where my great great grandfather and his brothers set sail for Ellis Island and a new life in America.

I would then like to sail back home.