Ever really wanted to do something, and tried to imagine what it would look like in your head? I don’t know about you but the dream sequence is never quite as good as the reality. That was my experience when we went to Mont. St. Michel several years ago and was my experience today, too. I said I’d read all those children’s books by British authors, and the Tower of London figured prominently in a few of those.Today I was there for the first time. Wow.

I don’t know why I love old buildings. If you’ve read my blog while I’ve been traveling with my team in Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere, you may have seen photo after photo of old buildings. It’s rare, however, that I find a building which is documented to have stood 1000 years ago. I know all the parts of the Tower complex are not that old, but the parts that are…and then there are the ravens, still watching what happens, the same way they were at the time of the beheadings.

And of course since I was wondering about the Roman walls and roads, there were the remnants of the walls.

As if that wasn’t enough, there was Tower Bridge.

And then, just for Lindsay, a bride!

Off we went to Camden Town. First stop, the Jewish Museum (which is really charming) and the Jewish Genealogy Society of Great Britain (JGSGB) which held an all day conference today. Wonderful group, great conference!

Our next stop was Mei Leaf, a favorite tea shop and a refreshment break – a pot of tea for one of us and a dark chocolate chili chai for the other (me). We left the tea shop and were shocked by the size of the crowds. We followed them for a while, and wound up exactly where we would have gone – Camden Locks and Market, on the way, some amusing sights.

We finished the day with dinner and pints at a local pub. Startlingly, since we were in a fish & chips mood, the first pub we went into was all out! Second pub was wonderful, and to top it off, a cute family from Spain was there with their 14 month old daughter who was in the mood to play with us, and her parents didn’t mind.

Tomorrow my office starts its annual (friendly) competition to walk to the North Pole. Each team records their steps daily. Yesterday we walked over 21,000 and today, lazy as we were, we only got about 19,000. I hope we can keep this up all week – it’ll be a great start. Our walk to far away places goes through the end of December, with each team being responsible for walking 6,800,000 steps for a total or 41,846,080 steps.