LONDON — We got back to our traveling roots today, a genuine Thompson Torture Tour from start to finish, even though we skipped the torture exhibit at the Tower of London. Which is where we started our day. After a short tube ride in commuter-packed trains, we emerged into the crisp morning at Tower Hill, big puffy clouds threatening rain. The guide books aren’t kidding when they say arrive early at major sites — it was quiet and peaceful as we crossed the ancient moat into the 11th century fortress. For all disturbing history and terror associated with the Tower, it looked benign and beautiful on a fresh spring morning. Will was wary of what lurid tales the Yeoman Warders might tell, so we skipped the official tours and struck out on our own.

 The armor display was probably the highlight for Will — more so than the gargantuan Crown Jewels or the recreated medieval palace rooms of 13th century Tower benefactors King Henry III and his son Edward I. Rooms were filled with swords, and suits of armor for jousting, and walls of chest protectors and sabers — just like at home. We learned fun little facts like jousters joust blind at the last minute before impact, as they tip their heads and their masks (it’s still hard to call them helmets) back and peer through a small crack as they charge, then jerk their head forward at the last minute so the eye-holeless mask protects their faces.

 We were moved by the 500-year-old graffiti carved in stone by condemned prisoners held in the Salt Tower. A Norman Romanesque chapel in the medieval palace was perhaps the most beautiful space we’ve seen, with its graceful arches, golden-hued stone and light-filled windows. We decided, however, that in place of the six black ravens that must be kept in the Tower at all times, they should rather have six fat black English Labradors to lounge on the grassy open spaces and prevent the realm from collapsing. One final note on the Tower — Will was playing a video game to show kids how hard it is to calibrate the angle of a cannon to shoot an oncoming army. Every time Will shot short, and hit a poor cow in the foreground instead, a voice would intone “Mind the cow!” (Kind of like, “Mind the gap,” when exiting a train.) We’ve decided this is the new thing to shout out at fencing bouts, when a fencer falls short, it’s “Mind the Cow!” Then another short subway ride to the columnar Monument to the Great Fire of 1666, that started at the King’s baker’s house on nearby Pudding Lane. Will wasn’t allowed to go to the top because it was packed with school kids, but we will try again later in the trip. Everything is so close to everything in central London, that we are sure we will pass close by again.

We then wound our way over to the preserved 18th-century home of Samuel Johnson, often called Dr. Johnson, though as I write this I’m not sure why because he wasn’t a doctor. I’ll have to google that later. He was a journalist and writer who compiled the works of Shakespeare as well as the most complete dictionary of the English language in 1755. He was apparently quite a character, rude and untidy and witty and hilarious. Just our kind of guy. We’d seen him dressed up in togas in St. Paul’s Cathedral — clearly not the Samuel Johnson of real life — I’d read in one guide he looks like he’s been disturbed from his shower to answer the door in a towel. We had fun looking up fencing terms in a reproduction of his dictionary — John Locke apparently used fencing in a sentence this way, under the heading Fencing School: “If a man be to prepare his son for duels, I had rather mine should be a good wrestler than an ordinary fencer, which is the most a gentleman can attain to, unless he will be constantly in the fencing school, and every day exercising.” So that pretty much sums up Oregon Fencing Alliance! Under Fencer: (I’m guessing George) Herbert: “Calmness is great advantage: He that lets another chase, may warm him at his fire, mark all his wand’rings, and enjoy his frets; as cunning fencers suffer heat to tire.” And Digby: “A nimble fencer will put in a thrust so quick, that the sword will be in your bosom when you thought it a yard off.” I’m sure Maestro Ed and Coach Adam would agree.

We then headed over for lunch at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a pub tracing its history back to 1532; the current building is post-Great-Fire, 1667. When we told the elderly caretaker at Dr. Johnson’s House we were planning to eat there, she wrinkled her face up in disgust and said we didn’t have to actually eat there, we could just stick our heads in. “It’s a spit and sawdust place,” she said with distaste. Guide books and friends had told us it was not great food, but guess what? It was THE BEST MEAL OF THE TRIP. We entered the dark, clearly very old restaurant, and the waiter asked, oracle-like, if we wanted the pub or the restaurant. We felt like it was a test, and we didn’t know the right answer. We said the restaurant, which was apparently the right answer, because he seated us in the choicest seats in the house, next to a fire. It wasn’t until after we sat down that we realized Will was sitting in Charles Dicken’s favorite seat, and I was sitting in Dr. Johnson’s. OK, so maybe they weren’t actually their favorite seats, but hey, there were brass plaques, and they were facing the door, which is where I imagine any good writer would want to sit — near the fire, with an eye on the comings and goings of other people. Then the food — there was only one other person in the place, which made us nervous, but he was eating a meat pie, and he told us it was good, so Will and I both ordered one, and IT WAS AMAZING. I love all caps. I’ve had some rotten meals on this trip, so it was delightful to order right for the first time. Halfway through the meal (Will ate all his and half of mine), it suddenly dawned on Will that he was having 1. Pie 2. Beef Stew. and 3. Gravy — all his favorite food groups in one meal. Poor Rick had soggy fish and chips — so I guess that’s what all the restaurant reviewers had ordered. We then walked through the lawyer-heavy Lincoln’s Inn, one of the four Inns of the Court, to which barristers of England and Wales belong. It was grassy and quiet, with funky old buildings that look like they inspired the Harry Potter movie artists, all turrets and brick. As we walked under a covered area, we all of a sudden realized we were walking on tombs — an unlabeled chapel. We ended up at Sir John Soane’s museum, which we had been told not to miss, but we left a little perplexed. He was an architect, so late18th century/early 19th centuries, and designed the old Bank of England building. He was also an eccentric, a lover of antiquities and art, and he crammed his home full of his collection. The only problem was we could barely see the red figure Greek vases set high on the library shelves (real? copies? huh?), and Will was freaked he would somehow knock over the statuary and busts crammed everywhere. There were mirrors throughout, curved surfaces intended to magnify the light. The effect at night by candlelight is apparently stunning. Somehow, we were more interested in his own architectural drawings, both of his own buildings and of ancient Greek and Roman buildings. It was a quirky fun visit.

And it was only 2:40. What is a family to do? Go back to the “flat” to rest? Oh, no, we decided to walk to Covent Garden, then Trafalgar Square, then to the Churchill War Rooms — the underground bunker where Sir Winston Churchill and his staff carried out the war as German bombs rained down on London (we learned later that a 5-foot-long unexploded bomb was found the day before near Tower Bridge — the past ever present.) But on our way there, we just HAD to stop at the 17th century Palladian Banqueting House by architect and classics-lover Inigo Jones. The site of King Charles I execution in 1649, as well as the triumphal return of his son, Charles II, after nasty crown-jewel-burning-Ireland-persecutor Oliver Cromwell was out, the Banqueting House is famous for the ceiling painting by Rubens of the apotheosis of Charles I’s father, James. The hall is still used for large events (it’s the only structure of Whitehall Palace that survives), but the best thing about it, and the reason it gets the TOURIST SITE OF THE DAY award from Will, is that there are beanbag chairs on the floor so you can lie down and look at the ceiling. Which Will and I did, and analyzed the art. It looked like the cherubs were all swimming in a pool above us, their fat little legs dangling, foreshortened, down toward us. If more museums would put in beanbag chairs, I assure you that kids like Will would learn to love art a heck of a lot faster.

OK, it’s getting late and you are probably not even still reading, but we ended our day at Rules, on our friend Mary Jo’s recommendation, reportedly the oldest restaurant in London 1798 — yes, we wanted old food today. And the food was amazing. Will had a Steak and Kidney Pie, and I had lamb. Rick, inexplicably, ordered scallops (at a restaurant specializing in game?) So Rick was of course still hungry when Will offered him the “mushrooms” he had picked out of his pie. I had eaten one, and been rather surprised to find it was a kidney, but kept my mouth shut in case it had a gross-out factor for Will. I winked at Rick, but he scarfed down the mushrooms, until I started laughing until I cried. We all did. Then we walked home because 1. we couldn’t face trying to find the Tube (Will’s preferred transport) and 2. everything is so close in London! By the time we staggered into our lobby, facing three flights of stairs, Rick grumbled that he would take the elevator but that it was always on Floor 6. But then I pointed out the 6 was actually a G, and it was always there, waiting for him. We laughed our way up the stairs, exhausted, full and happy.

LONDON — We rode the Midland train this morning about twenty miles north of London to the beautiful English village of Berkhamsted, home of our friends Elizabeth and Rob, and their two young sons, Ben, 5 and Joe, 2. They met us at the train station and drove us out to a wooded park that was busy with families–with scores of kids and dogs–romping on a crisp, sunny March morning under a bluebell sky.

I tucked into a full English breakfast–eggs, sausage, tomatoes, toast and beans–while the rest of the family showed slightly more restraint. When I went back for coffee, I met a local man with a good-sized English lab, a chocolate, and struck up a conversation while I petted his dog and missed our Pippy. His chocolate, named Zack, was a mid-sized male. When he asked me about Pippy, I confessed that she weighed close to 80 pounds. “That’s quite a big girl,” he declared. Well, yes. Full English, is the term, I suppose.

The boys soon locked on to Will, and he to them, and once we left the table they were right on Will’s rather large heels. (We first met Elizabeth and Rob when Will was 5, Ben’s age, so it was amazing to see how fast time goes for children, while it seems like just yesterday for us.) As we walked across a grassy meadow to a well-beaten trail through the woods, I started an argument with Ben about whose shadow on the grass was whose. He was pretty insistent that the smaller of the two shadows was his, no matter what I argued. “That’s mine, I know it is,” he said.

Will climbed the stairs on a tall columnar monument next to the cafe, and when he came down the young boys had caught the climbing bug. They kept after Will to help them climb the fallen beech trees in the woods. With his arms raised high, two-year-old Joe begged Will to help him up on a fallen log. “We’ve already done it twice,” Will pointed out. Again, again. And again. We hiked for about an hour and a half after breakfast, and with all the climbing, made it about four hundred yards through the woods. The boys were adorable.

Afterwards, we drove to their home on a steep hill overlooking Berkhamsted, a town of about 25,000 people. Rob’s childhood hometown, it was charming, rural, and felt more than a half-hour ride from London. On the surface picturesque and peaceful, bits of its history kept popping up in conversation. Oh yes, Graham Greene was from Berkhamsted and set some of his novels here. That former monastery over there — the one where Rob once bartended — that was the manor house of a man who developed many of the canals in England. The ruined castle? A favorite of Edward the Black Prince (1330-76). And then there was that siege in 1216 – you know, right after the barons forced King John into signing the Magna Carta, that thing that helped lead to our modern constitutional democracy — oh, yes, King Louis of France, backed by the barons, he laid successful siege here. More recently, more to today’s point, Ben and Joe were born here as well.

We shared tea and a chocolate cake that Ben had baked the previous day. It was every bit as good as — in fact better than — Fortnum and Mason’s, even though Ben only put in half the chocolate. While Joe, exhausted by all the climbing, struggled to take a nap, Ben trooped up and down the stairs fetching toys to bring down to play with Will. Courtenay went up with him once to see his bedroom, and as Ben showed her around, the five-year-old announced, “As you can see, I’m a very lucky boy.” Yes, indeed.

It was wonderful catching up with our friends, Rob’s job as a foreign news editor in London, and hearing about Elizabeth’s project to document motherhood through a series of amazing photos — check out #thesecretlifeofmothers and #bringinguptheboys for some unforgettable images. Stunning photographer and artist, Elizabeth is. We said our goodbyes, and Rob delivered us to the the ruins of the castle built in 1066 mentioned above that lie next to the train station. The castle belonged to the half brother of William the Conquerer. The remnants of the thousand-year-old stone walls are surrounded by rolling grasslands and a deep moat filled with cat tails and sedges.

On the train home, we met a young woman from Oklahoma State University who was returning from the Harry Potter Studios, which is our destination tomorrow. She described herself as a lifelong Harry Potter fan and confessed to being so excited about the tour of Harry Potter movie sets that she had “chills” the whole time.

We finished the day with a walk through London’s Hyde Park, which was packed with people jogging, boating, cycling, feeding the swans and enjoying the late-afternoon sunshine. We swung through Harrods, the over-the-top department store in Knightsbridge, where we saw the memorial to Lady Diana and bought meat pies and pieces of cheesecake for tomorrow night’s dinner when we return from Harry Potter.

As Ben would surely agree, we are very lucky boys and girls.

LONDON — We have arrived. Rick is too grumpy to blog. Courtenay keeps insisting that we say everything in her words. Rick keeps editing my post. Will keeps hitting the CAPS button on me.

That is all.