Travel Tuesday

Travel Tuesday

There are a few places in this world I would still like to visit before I give up on traveling altogether. And London is one of those places. The photo above is taken from The Royal Portfolio, and depicts the Queen's Guards standing in front of the palace.

I would love to be able to see the Tower of London, as, believe it or not, I have ancestors who were sent there to await execution by orders of other ancestors! (Try saying that three times without getting tongue tied!)

And, of all things, I'd love to visit some of the homes, or sites of the homes, where some of my ancestors once lived. (We are talking about many hundreds of years ago with those!) However, some of their remains (the buildings and castles) still have old stones from the castles present.

I would hope one day, before I leave this life to be able to go where my great-great-grandfather was really from. Of course, I would first have to discover where that place is actually! And therein lies the rub. It is like he was plopped down on this earth at the age of 12, as there has been no definitive proof of his birth prior to that time! And DNA has not matched us up with a recent (within 500 years) relative. A bit of a conundrum since there really aren't that many families with our ancestral name! Bean. Or its derivative. Well, we are plentiful in the sense that there are many Bean's, and some with very long histories. But our DNA has not matched up with any of them! Not a single one! Except for second cousins. Which, is of course, expected. But it is almost as if the Bean line just magically appeared with great-great-grandfather!

But it is the women that our Bean men married that can give us our long, and varied, histories. Three lines, of which, have led us into royal ancestry. All of the English kind. And so, I would one day like to visit London. Perhaps when England's WDYTYA is taping an episode they might invite a certain American cousin (mwah!) to come and visit the ancestral places of her heritage!  Well, who knows, a gal can dream big can't she?

Where would you travel to if given the option of visiting a location that is tied to your ancestors? And why?