St. Paul here we come!

April 19, 2011

Today we decided to go into London to sightsee. We didn’t want to spend money so we focused on free things. We decided to start at Tate Modern as it was close to our next destination. We crossed over the Millennium Bridge, pausing only once to take a picture of my wonderful bridge that I haven’t seen in forever. Once at the museum we realized the only two free things were two floors. So we started on Floor number 2 and soon realized modern art….sucks. It’s not really art and not sure how it can be called art. A mirror on the wall to me is not art. It is a mirror on the wall. Trees are nature…not art. Half of the items in the entire museum could have been done by the 5 year old kids in my classroom. It was a little bit ridiculous. We headed to Floor number 4 and realized it wasn’t any better. Despite the really cool names for the rooms, they were all really lame. I took a few pictures, however we were done with the museum in about an hour. After that we sat outside and ate our lunch. The cool thing about the museum was that next to it was a really cool patch of grass and trees to hang out in and eat. So that is where we ate our lunch. Afterwards we headed back over Millennium Bridge to St. Pauls Cathedral. It was huge! We walked inside and it was gorgeous. It was really cool because we got a free audio guide that told us all about the church. It explained how each part was made by Christopher Wren and that coolest part was the church was a lot bigger on the outside than the inside because he built a dome on the inside then a cone over it with a dome over that on the outside to make it visible to all outside. We walked through the entire bottom part of the church listening to the audio guide. We were told that Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech in the church when receiving his noble peace prize. We were also told that this was the church where Princess Diana was married. Very cool. Then we headed down to the crypt where the most people are buried in all the crypts in the UK, including Christopher Wren. After we were finished with the audio guide and had bought our souvenirs we decided to climb the stairs to the galleries. The first gallery was the Whispering Gallery (no idea why it was named that). That gallery was 257 steps and it was a ring around the inside of the church so that people could look down on the Nave. After standing on opposite sides whispering to each other to see if we could be heard (we couldn’t) we decided to continue up. We went to the next gallery called the Stone Gallery. This one being outside with pillars so it was hard to see, however it was really cool to look down and out. This one was 376 steps. We waited in the line to walk up to the final gallery. When it was our turn we climbed up the spiral staircase making our way to the Golden gallery, also outside but this time with a low fence so it was easy to see over it. This gallery was 528 steps. From this part of the gallery we could see the London Eye and Tower Bridge. It was really cool to be up so high and to have accomplished it by walking all the way up. After that we had to begin the decent down the narrow stairs. All 528 we walked back down...this time our legs shaking if we paused for a minute. We ended up sitting down for a bit afterwards to give our legs a break. After regaining control over our legs we ventured into Piccadilly Circus in search of the Royal wedding shot glasses. I was getting them for people at home. We found them and then decided to head home as it had been a tiring day. Oh the joys of sightseeing in London. The museum was a disappointment; however St. Pauls was beautiful and very cool to look at. I really enjoyed it.

Until next time,

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