We've been married more than 30 years now and as the years have accumulated, we stopped giving each other gifts opting instead to create memories through travel. This year, for Dan's December birthday, he chose London for our destination. We read that London is a spectacular city for Christmas lights. It was.
Our winter journey began with a luxurious trip from Victoria Station on the
Belmond British Pullman train to Salisbury to hear a Christmas Carol performance in Salisbury Cathedral followed by a tour of the cathedral.
These elegant, Art Deco rail carriages were originally built in the 20s and 30s. Each one has a name. We were seated in Audrey which the porter told us was the Queen Mum's favorite. Nelson Mandela sat in Seat 20 in the adjoining Vera built in 1932 with Springbuck marquetry. We were properly impressed by the stories.
On the way to Salisbury, we were pampered with brunch and Bellini cocktails. On the return we had a scrumptious four-course dinner.
Besides just being in Salisbury Cathedral, one of the highlights of the tour was seeing the Magna Carta. The Cathedral has one of the four remaining copies. Initially, there were many copies, but seven days after King John was made to place his seal on the documents, he began destroying them.
For security and archival purposes, the document is housed in a new glass case within a tent under very low lighting. Not too long ago a possibly deranged man trying to steal the document took a hammer to the document's former glass case. He put three holes in the case, the glass held, and the alarm sounded. He ran out but was tackled by several stone masons working on cathedral restoration.
No photos are allowed of the document itself, but there is a digital, searchable document nearby. The writing is very small and many words and phrases have been abbreviated to keep the document to one page. The page is sheepskin parchment, and the King's wax seal has long since fallen off. It looks most unimpressive in contrast to the esteemed place it holds in our legal system.
On another day back in London, we made a visit to the British Museum intent on seeing two things: the Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone. To my eye, the Elgin Marbles are mostly rubble, and the British Museum should return them to Greece. Lord Elgin, the UK ambassador to Turkey, somehow acquired the marbles from the Turkish government (at the time Turkey controlled Greece) and had them sent to his own home. Unfortunately, Lord and Lady Elgin eventually divorced and the Lord was forced to liquidate assets in the form of selling the marbles to the British Museum to fund the divorce.
The Rosetta Stone, however, is worth seeing in person. It is a surviving fragment of a stone stele; the inscription dated 27 March 196 BC is written in three languages: Egyptian hieroglyphics (traditional script of Egyptian monuments), Demotic (everyday script for literate Egyptians), and Greek (used by the government). It was the key that enabled the meaning of hieroglyphs to be discovered.
Hieroglyphs record both the sound and image for the word as in the British Museum's example for cat. There is an image for each letter of the sound a cat makes followed by an image of a cat. Simple once the Rosetta Stone was unlocked.
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