Charles Dickens Museum and Westminster Wanderings
Reading Time: 5 minutes We made it to our LAST DAY in London!
Charles Dickens Museum
We booked a handmaid’s tour at the Charles Dicken’s Museum for 10:00 this morning. Dicken’s is one of our favorite classic authors. In fact, just this past fall, the girls and I enjoyed reading Oliver Twist for school and it reminded me how much I enjoy the depth of Dickens’ writings.
We arrived just a few minutes before 10:00 and were promptly admitted on the hour. The museum is the Victorian home of Dickens and his family and is also where he wrote Nicolas Nicolby and Oliver Twist.
The handmaids tour was absolutely entertaining and full of new information to learn. I would definitely recommend it for kids and would surely bring our kids if we ever had them in London with us. The “handmaid” gave us a dramatic tour from her 1st-person point-of-view. She was full of wit, charm and knowledge. Such a fun way to learn about an amazing author!
Fun fact: a drawing room has nothing to do with drawing. The name is shortened from the word withdraw and is a room in which to withdraw after dinner. This is where Dickens would dramatically read aloud his writings to his guests after dinner.
We enjoyed seeing the room in which Dickens did his writing. He had a fast routine of writing from 8:00 until noon every day. This desk and chair is where he wrote many of his later works, including A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.
Westminster Abbey
After the tour, we took the tube to Westminster Station so we could walk around Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.
Westminster Abbey is the traditional place of coronation. Since 1100, there have been 16 royal weddings here. Thousand of burials of prominent people in British history have also taken place here.
Houses of Parliament
The Houses of Parliament is formally called the Palace of Westminster. This building now serves as the meeting place for the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
We didn’t get to see the clock tower that houses the bell Big Ben as it was covered in scaffolding for some repairs.
Buckingham Palace
Since Buckingham Palace wasn’t too far away, we decided to walk over to see that, too. This is where the Queen of England resides for most of the year.
The Buckingham Palace tulips were in full bloom and the aroma was wafting all around in the breeze.
Next we turned our direction toward home base and walked past the St. James Park gates and down the street past Green Park leading to up to Wellington Arch.
We stopped back at the hotel and made ourselves a cup of warm tea. We decided to try a Malaysian restaurant in our neighborhood for supper tonight. We had a chicken satay starter and something really good that I don’t remember the name of for supper. I know I had some coconut rice with beef and Dave had shrimp in his meal, but we basically asked the server to recommend his favorite dishes for us. It was another delicious meal! And, no dessert tonight!!
On our walk back to the hotel, we saw this sign outside a pub that made us LOL! Gotta love that British humor!
