Holiday in Londonia!

(You expected a Clash reference for the title, didn't you?)

Hello! We're freshly back from a short vacation to the lovely megalopolis that was London! The trip was great, but far too short. I can't believe I have to go back to freaking work already! Oh well, I have to pay off the bills I racked up while there, so you gotta do what you gotta do.

I'm planning on stretching the trip out to a few blog posts, which shouldn't be too hard, since we did quite a lot in the 4.5 days we were there. Yet there are still so many things we'd like to see that we've already talked about a second trip in 3-4 years.

For my first post, I thought I'd mix the U.S. and the U.K. a bit. In my internet searching for fun things to do while in the city I came upon a few familiar names. It turns out that London's got a few statues of American presidents and one historic building where a founding father lived while ambassador.

First up, within the first day or two of us wandering around sight seeing, we ran into a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Parliament Square! This we we had not expected to see.

I guess the statue is a replica of one in Chicago, which was presented to England to commemorate 100 years of peace between the US and the UK. There is no plaque mentioning this, so I had to look that up when we got home.

The next statue I had read about, but didn't expect to find quite so easily! This turned out to be right outside the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square.

This statue of George Washington was presented as another gift to England about a year after the Lincoln statue. The people of Virginia decided that Britain could use a statue of the guy that helped defeat them in 1776, but since they knew that Washington had refused to ever set foot on British soil again they shipped dirt from Virginia to stand the statue in, so technically I'm standing on good ol' American soil as this pic was taken.

Finally, and since we found the first two so easily I insisted on finding Ben Franklin's house. It turned out this was also very close by and was only a couple of block away from Trafalgar Sq.

I knew that Franklin was an ambassador to the US in London for a good while. From what I remember he was well liked by the people and kept up his reputation for being a ladies man while there. The house had a tour, but we didn't feel like paying for it, so we settled for a pic of the spot to complete our trifecta of American leaders/founders.

Next time, museums!