Vox Lucens

All of that travel brings us to London. And in London, I took a lot of pictures. There will be a number of installments!

Our first stop, other than dropping off our bags at the hotel, was to head to the Tower of London for the Ceremony of the Keys, the locking of the Tower. We went back again to see the Tower itself the next morning, and spent a few hours - but I’m pretty sure I could have spent days in the Tower alone, exploring a richness of history that has few rivals.

The Tower from the Thames.

And then, of course, there is the most famous bridge-in-London-that-is-not-the-London-Bridge - the Tower Bridge. Also the most iconic and beautiful bridge spanning the Thames.

Beautiful night or day.

The White Tower

On our way through England down to London, we stopped at Blenheim Palace for a detailed look at a grand English country estate - this one doubly special, because aside from the intrinsic charm of the architecture and gardens, it is also the ancestral home of the Churchills. (Yes, that Churchill!)

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Happy Reformation Day, all! Today marks the 494th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg. I’ve already posted pictures from Wittenberg, of course, so as we continue through the Reformation Tour our next stop is St. Andrews.

St. Andrews was not a scheduled stop on our trip, but when we went to church in Dundee and had a longish lunch break, a few of us (the “Crazy Six”) hailed a cab and took off north.

St. Andrews is the birthplace of golf, but more importantly for our purposes, it is the site of the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral, which John Knox, as a slave on a French galley, saw from his ship and prophesied that he would return to Scotland and preach there. And he did.

The cathedral is now in ruins…but what a ruins.

In Amsterdam, we caught an overnight ferry across the North Sea, arriving in Newcastle the next morning on a typical UK day. From Newcastle, we headed north to Edinburgh for our next reformer, John Knox, and the amazing history surrounding his work in Scotland - including names like Mary, Queen of Scots, and King James VI & I, as he is known (sixth King James of Scotland, and when he took the English throne as well, first King James of England).

We arrived at the Royal Mile, a busy stretch of street from Mary’s Holyrood Palace to Edinburgh Castle. And in the middle, what was to me the most beautiful of all the great cathedrals we visited on this trip: St. Giles, John Knox’s church and still considered the mother church of Presbyterianism.

John Knox is far from the only noteworthy individual in Edinburgh’s illustrious history. Here’s another.

Holyrood Palace, home of Mary, Queen of Scots and birthplace of King James.

The ruins of Holyrood Abbey, founded in 1128 by King David I of Scotland, and now a gorgeous ruins.

From Hamlin, we headed out to Amsterdam and our ferry across the North Sea to Great Britain. We had a couple of hours waiting…and we spent those hours wisely. Who knew that waiting for the ferry could be such a moving experience?

I don’t remember the first time that I read the book The Hiding Place, but it was absolutely one of the most memorable and impacting books of my growing-up years. Being in the house was nothing short of surreal. I’m pretty sure I missed most of what the guide said as we sat in the living room, as the stories flooded back into my mind, all the more real for being there.

The compartment in the stairs where the ration cards were hidden from the Nazis.

The hiding place.

The closet entry to the hiding place.

Casper ten Boom’s Bible.

And while in Haarlem, we managed to fit in a stop at a fantastic cheese shop for some Dutch Gouda.

Our next stop was in Hamlin, which you may not necessarily think of as a Reformation hotspot. But among our castle visits and wild boar for dinner, we fit in a very meaningful Reformation stop…

Schloss Hämelschenburg

This little building, on the grounds of Castle Hämelschenburg, is our Reformation highlight. It is, to best of our knowledge, the oldest church built as a Protestant church.

And of course, no trip to Hamlin would be complete without a walk along the Pied Piper’s route! We passed the street where, to this day, music is outlawed, and thanks to such regulation, our lives were preserved from his pipes.