Three sets of pictures today. I figured out how to get my pictures off my camera. Yay!
So far this week has been church week. The weekend was spent mostly working, but on Monday, I was defintely ready for a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral. The cathedral looks more like a capitol building to me from the outside, but on the inside, it's all church.
The cool thing about St. Paul's (well, one of the cool things) is that you can climb all the way up to pretty close to the top, and go outside and look around. [heights of parts of the dome] It's somewhere around 550 steps to the top, and at the beginning, the steps are shallow and wooden, and they curve around. Then, you get to the whispering gallery, which is around the bottom edge of the dome, and looks down onto the main part of the church. My favorite part of the whispering gallery was how worn the stone floor was along the edge of it. It made me think about how many other people had walked through there before.
After the whispering gallery, the steps get steeper and more painful, and it seems like they will never end. The reward at the end is reaching the stone gallery, where you can go outside and look around the city from every angle. We were rushed out of there, though, because there's even more steps to climb, and it was almost closing time.
The steps that go from the stone gallery to the golden gallery are steep spiral steel stairs, and they didn't bother me until the girl in front of me freaked out and wouldn't go any further because the steps scared her. Then I started to get a little more concerned about it, but told myself that you never hear of people dying when they visit the cathedral, so I shouldn't be too worried. The good part about being a little freaked was that I spent less time focusing on how my legs were about to refuse to take one more step based on sheer exhaustion.
The view from the top was definitely worth the climb. I took lots of pictures, but currently don't have a way to get those from my camera to my computer, so will have to post them later.
Before the big climb up the dome, we visited the crypt, where there are lots and lots of memorials to various people, including Lord Nelson (he's big here), and a whole lot of other people who I can't remember at all. Christopher Wren, who was the architect of the cathedral, is buried there, with the inscription: "If you seek his monument, look around you." (I admit, I had to read this in my tour book, because I wasn't up to translating the Latin that the inscription is written in.)
One of my favorite things in the crypt at St. Paul's was the monuments that had been recovered from the fire of the earlier St. Paul's. They weren't in great shape, but they were from the 1500's, and that was pretty amazing.
I'm glad that I saw the crypt at St. Paul's before I went to Westminster Abbey today, because I would have been seriously underimpressed with St. Paul's brand-new crypt compared to Westminster.
I took the audio tour at Westminster, which was a great idea, because pretty much nothing was marked throughout the church. I spent a little bit of time reading about some of the kings and queens of England yesterday, and saw a whole bunch of their tombs today in the church. The ceilings are always the most amazing part of every church, and this was certainly no exception. Instead of a dome, it was lots and lots of arches [image that sort of shows it and this does too]. Around the church are a lot of different chapels, all with lots and lots of memorials and statues and plaques. There was one room that had a whole bunch of ornately carved seats on each side of it, and the top row had books in front of each seat. I really wanted to find out what the book was, but didn't think it would be proper to climb up on the first row of seats to find out.
My favorite part of Westminster was the cloisters. I had no idea what the cloisters was, but what it is is a big grassy square with a covered walkway all around it. It's so pretty and peaceful, and easy to imagine it just the same 500 years ago. It was also the only place you could take pictures, so I have a few from there. [one from my camera phone]
On all of the walkways, there's plaques on the walls and on the floor, just like everywhere else in the church. One of the plaques on the floor is for 26 monks who died of the black death. Another neat memorial, just inside one doorway, is the tomb of the unknown soldier, from WWI. My audio tour said that Queen Elizabeth laid her mother's funeral wreath on it when she walked out, like her mother laid her wedding bouquet on it at her wedding.
After Westminster Abbey, I went to the War Cabinet rooms near the Parliament building, to see where Winston Churchill ran things during WWII. In some of the rooms, things were pretty much as they had been when the war was over. There's maps on the wall with pinholes and pins and yarn connecting the pins, maps that were tracking boats and troop movement, the room where the secretaries typed dictation and other things, and the room where the BBC broadcast Churchill's speeches from.
Then, it was 5, and time to go back to Westminster Abbey to see their evening service. I couldn't resist a chance to see the Westminister Boy's Choir sing! The singing and organ music was so cool. I was really glad I went, and listening to it inside the church with the amazing ceilings only added to the whole experience.
Things I definitely still need to do before I leave London include the Tower of London, and Buckingham Palace. I'd also like to see the Natural History museum, Kensington Palace, and a whole lot of other stuff, but am not sure that all of those things will happen this time!
I've been in London since Wednesday, but today was the first day I really had a chance to get out and see very much. I really love being here -- there's so many amazing things that I see just walking down the street, it seems like every time I turn a corner or turn my head I see another intricately built building or a charming twisty alleyway paved with cobblestones.
Highlights of today's sightseeing extravaganza included:
Pictures from today are here. I took all of these with my cell phone. I think that tomorrow I'm taking my regular camera for better quality.
