London

            The first city our group visited was London. Walking into the British Museum, the first artifact on display was the world-renowned Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone truly fascinates me, and it was incredible experience to see such an amazing piece of history in person! Of course, it is the most visited object in the British Museum, which was made obvious by the sheer amount of people crowding around it, upon when we came into contact with it. It's incredibly fortunate that that piece of history has been recovered (well, what wasn't damaged of it, as it is a fragmented piece). It is only one of a few surviving documents/artifacts that allows us to understand Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics, with the inscriptions being in 3 different languages: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (the portion that was damaged, unfortunately), Demotic script, and Ancient Greek (as during the later years in the Egyptian Empire, Greek was spoken). 

Next, we were able to visit the British Library and see a plethora of amazing historical documents such as the Gutenberg Bible (the first printed book in Western Civilization), the Magna Carta (an article dating back to 1215 in  England that granted basic rights such as requiring due process of law for one to be punished), original writings of Beatles' song lyrics, pages from Da Vinci's notebook, handwritten music from Beethoven, sketches from Michelangelo, Lewis Carrol's original manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground, and Mercator's world maps. I felt fortunate to gaze my eyes upon the work of such great minds that once labored over these documents years and years ago.

Another interesting place that we visited in London was Winston Churchill's underground bunker that he stayed in during World War II, as a base of operations. We were able to see the original living quarters of Winston, his wife, his staff, and his military officers, left exactly as they were after they were closed off after D-Day. 

More to come soon as I am writing this after arriving in glorious Berlin today!