If it's Tuesday...

...it must be London. We have been in the London area since Saturday night, based in a beautiful cottage in a tiny town in West Sussex. The view from the back of the cottage - as Claire would say, OMG! Fields and ponds and rolling countryside going on forever

Sunday was our medieval/Roman day. We started by driving to Fishbourne Roman Palace, a site discovered in 1960 when workers digging for a water pipe began turning up mosaic tiles and other artifacts. After years of work, they recovered some mosaic floors almost intact, and they've dated parts of the palace to the first and second centuries (they've identified several phases of the building). The exhibit displays some of the walls and mosaics exactly in situ and then outlines some of what they have learned about the rest of the palace - about half the site was already built on with modern houses when it was discovered. A must-see for archaeology enthusiasts.

We next drove up to Salisbury to see the cathedral and one of three legible contemporary copies of the Magna Carta (and the old section of town, which is very pretty), then to Stonehenge and Avebury. Avebury is a stone circle site not too far from Stonehenge, with smaller rocks but circling a much larger area (and you can walk up to and among the stones).

Yesterday, we came in to London and spent the afternoon being tourists (with more tourist-being on the schedule for today). The highlight was seeing Henry VIII performed at the Shakespeare Globe Theater last night. We also enjoyed a river cruise on the Thames and a trip up the London Eye. Today, maybe the Crown Jewels and the British Museum before heading back to West Sussex. And tomorrow, we fly home.