london town

St. Paul's

First off, I did not take a lot of pictures in London since most of our time was spent inside churches and museums and honestly, I thought it was pretty annoying that people were taking pictures of every little thing in the museums so it was hard for those of us who just wanted to look.

Anyhow, we arrived Saturday afternoon and got oriented. We stayed in Kensington, so we took a walk in the garden, found Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial - that Victoria really liked Albert! We got some food and crashed.

Sunday was supposed to be a light day, but it ended up just as busy as the rest. We started at the Hyde Park ward for church - very nice people, used to visitors, fun mix of people. After lunch and a change of shoes for me, we walked the long way to St. Paul's cathedral for a 3:30 evensong (service with singing). The church was spectacular and the singing very nice, the sermon started with World Cup humor, so there you go - I really enjoyed it and being the cheap soul I am, I appreciated you could get in free for the service (it's usually over L10 to tour the cathedral).

After the service, we crossed the river and used the water closet at the Tate Modern and then headed to Westminster Abbey for their 5:00 organ recital followed by another service (again free for services, L14 for tours). We assumed it would also have a choir, but that particular service was a special service to remember refugees, so it was all about that with congregational singing. We sang several songs/hymns, including, if you can believe it: KumBiYa (however you spell that). I certainly never thought of that song in connection with Westminster. Anyhow, definitely not planned, but interesting anyway.

We walked home via Buckingham Palace - wow, that woman has a HUGE backyard - and then headed home. Ryan figured out later that we walked 15 miles that day! WHOA!

Westminster Abbey

Monday was a rather "violent" day. We spent the morning at the Tower of London (grisly) and the afternoon at the Imperial War Museum. The War Museum was very well done and Ryan could have easily spent a full day there. They had an impressive collection of WWI and WWII history and artifacts. I especially liked the section on England at home during WWII - how they lived, rationed, etc - very cool. But seriously, I had nightmares that night. History sometimes isn't very pretty.

Tuesday we did the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A) in the morning and the British Museum in the afternoon. I could spend 2 days in the V&A; it is a HUGE museum full of stuff, no better word for it - furniture, art, clothing, costumes, jewelry - so COOL. I can totally see why people do costuming research in London; they had a whole wing just dedicated to textiles, and an INCREDIBLE display of jewelry from hundreds of years of history.

The British Museum was also super amazing in a history of civilization way - huge, comprehensive and well organized. I wish I was better educated about what I was seeing even though I did very well in my History of Civ. classes at college. Maybe Dr. Bush should have taken us on a field trip to London.


This is my lunch on Tuesday at Wagamama's. No, that black thing is not an Oreo, it's a mushroom.

This is the interior of the great courtyard at the British Museum - the place is HUGE!

This is the view from our Hotel - chimmchimeree.

London was fun, big, pretty parks, nice people, well trainined dogs, O.K. unerground system, fun accents, awful fashion, and love those red phone booths they keep round to look cool.