Music and Literature...a pilgrimage

"Writers' Well"--a well in some town somewhere in Ireland.

Our tour of Europe two years ago ended up being a kind of pilgrimage for me.

Jane Austen's writing table in her house in Chawton, where she spent the last eight years of her life. Her desk, which would have been placed on this table, is now in the British Library along with her pen and a small handwritten book she wrote for her sister, Cassandra.

I would suggest going to the British Library if you are ever in London. There you can see one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta, Handel's handwritten Messiah, and so much more.

The Eagle and Child (also known as the Bird and Baby) in Oxford, where the Inklings would meet on a regular basis. The Inklings were a literary group of which members included C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, and other renown authors whom I've never read. Oxford is one of my favorite places and the University is historic.

Westminster Abbey. The burial place of many kings and queens of England, this remarkable (and rather crowded with memorials) abbey is also the resting place of many writers. Geoffrey Chaucer was buried in a corner of the cathedral, and over time this corner became known as the Poets' Corner. Charles Dickens, Handel, Robert Browning, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson are buried there, plus many others. Memorials include the Bronte sisters, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Browning, Robert Burns, Lewis Carroll, George Elliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Elizabeth Gaskell, John Keats, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walter Scott, Anthony Trollope, Oscar Wilde, and William Wordsworth...and of course, many others.
This is most definitely a place to see and it is worth the pretty penny it almost takes to get in. Not only for the poets, but also for the royalty.
Shakespeare's Globe (or at least the reconstruction of it).I think that it is probably worth the time and money to tour it during the day, but don't waste your money buying tickets to a show. Instead, if you're dying to see something in London, Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theater is pretty awesome and I hear that Les Mis is worth it as well.
Jumping to Vienna, in the Wahring cemetery you can find, in a half circle, the graves of Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss, and Brahms.Salzburg, birthplace of Mozart:In Ireland you find these lines, penned by one of Ireland's greatest poets, engraved in stone:He wrote a poem of his death and where he would be buried: Drumcliff Church. "An ancestor was rector there" as he wrote, and "By his command these words were cut:

Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!"

W. B. Yeats was the poet who wrote the familiar poem "Down by the Salley Gardens" which was put to an Irish tune.

Rydal Mount, one of William Wordsworth's houses in the Lake District. It looks over Lake Windermere. And his gravestone:
Hill Top Farm--the home of Beatrix Potter, creator and friend of Peter Rabbit. "Miss Potter" is one of my favorite movies, and it tells the story of her life.The Bronte parsonage in Haworth, Yorkshire.
What a legacy of literature, music, and history we have...and this is just a little part of it.