Adventures with Dad Engelbrecht, Part 2 – England and France

We set off for a week-long tour of England and France with Dad Engelbrecht on August 26.

First, we saw London, including Parliament and the tower that houses Big Ben. Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the tower.
My favorite part was Westminster Abbey, which was huge and ornate. It was interesting to see how closely the church was tied to the royalty and government, very different from the separation of church and state we have in the US.

Of course we stopped by Tower Bridge.

We climbed to the top of St. Paul's Cathedral for a good view of the city. It looks like I'm fighting other tourists for a spot on the railing, while trying not to drop all my tourist brochures in the wind.

The British Museum has a wonderful collection of artifacts from ancient civilizations; its collection is probably the best in the world. I like the Grecian urns:

And the Assyrian human-headed lion:

But my favorite is the stern Egyptian hawk. It reminds me of Sam the Eagle from the Muppets.

After we left London, we went to Stonehenge. This construction dates from at least 3000 years ago, and no one knows exactly what it was for. It's much smaller than I had expected.
After Stonehenge, we went to Bournemouth, on the southern England coast, for an air show. Josh and I have gone to several air shows over the years, and this was a good chance for us to see the Red Arrows, the British military precision flying team.There were lots of other cool military planes and helicopters, including four different helicopters that flew together, but I don't remember their names or have good pictures. (Sorry, Bro. I'll send you the pics I do have.)

Then we took an overnight ferry to the Normandy beaches on the northern coast of France. These beaches were the location of the D-Day Landings in 1944. Here is Josh on Omaha Beach, where many US troops landed.A few German bunkers on the hillside are still intact:

There is a large American cemetery, with a nice memorial and museum with copious information about the battle. There is also a much smaller German cemetery:

From Normandy, we headed to Versailles to see the Palace of Versailles, home of Louis XIV (and his successors). Josh and I had seen it already a few weeks ago, but it is worth another visit, and Dad had not seen it. This is the back view of the huge palace, with a fountain in view.Here we are enjoying the "Petit Trianon," the smaller palace in the back garden of the large Versailles palace.

I still find the cute Versailles topiaries very huggable.

For our last stop, we spent a day in Paris before heading home. We started by enjoying the foggy view from the Sacre Cour church, which stands on a hill above the city:

And of course we stopped by the Eiffel Tower:

And the Arc de Triomph:

Finally we headed home to Deurne, where we had four days to rest up before our next adventure....