St. Paul's Cathedral!

Today we went in to London to see St. Paul's Cathedral.

This magnificent edifice, built by Sir Christopher Wren has withstood almost 300 years of London's history. And that is just the Cathedral we see today. It's foundation lies upon the foundations of other cathedrals built bearing the name of St Paul. There have been at least 3 before the current one, if not more. Indeed, a cathedral to St. Paul has stood on this very spot since 906 AD!

I don't have a lot of time to write, but i will say that we went into the crypt and saw the burial places of Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, as well as that of Sir Christopher Wren and his wife. We also climber 507 steps to stand on the outside of the dome and take in the magnificent views!

(DeAnna, taking in the view of London from St Paul's)

(It was rather windy up there!)

Here's a link to a virtual tour of St Pauls!

http://www.sphericalimages.com/stpauls/virtual_tour.htm

CHEERIO!

Her Majesty, the Queen

We didn't fall asleep last night until about 2am....jet lag is still hanging on to us, but only by a thread now! I had the front desk call us at 8am to wake us up...it was hard to get out of bed but we did it!

We got in to London about 10 am or so...got off at the St James Park station and walked over to Buckingham Palace! This would be our second time seeing the exterior, since the first day we met our friends out in front of the Palace.

We "queued", or stood in line, for about a half hour to get tickets! But is was entirely worth it.

First, we went through the state rooms. They were so grand and large! A few of the highlight include the Throne Room, the Ballroom, the State Dining Room and the Music Room.

The Grand Stairs....

It was delightful to go up these stairs! In fact it was more than delightful...because I was actually listening to the audio tour and there was grand music playing at the same time I was walking up the stairs! I felt like a princess..

The Throne Room

The Ballroom

The ballroom can serve many functions, from being a ballroom to being a banquet hall. I can only imagine what the balls are like at Buckingham Palace! On the first day of a state visit, the Queen entertains the visiting head of state with a banquet. This tradition is as old as the institiution of monarchy itself! 160 people can be seated in the ballroom.

The State Dining Room

The magnificent State Dining Room, though smaller than the ballroom, is just as grand, if not grander. It commands a beautiful view of the west lawn in addition to seating 46 people.

The Music Room

Finally! The best room in the house :D I loved it!

After seeing the State Rooms, we got to see the Queen's Gallery, and the Royal Mews! That's all I have time for today!!!! I'll update this post later...

(Windy!!)

BM, V&A and Mind the Gap

We stayed up until 1am London time watching Star Gate:Atlantis, trying to beat jet lag. I think it was efficient, although DeAnna woke up and couldn't fall back asleep. We came back from London today and I crashed...I only meant to sleep for a little while and have them wake me, but they didn't! And they went to sleep as well. It wouldn't have been a big deal if it hadn't been 7pm! I woke up after my "nap" and probably won't go to sleep till 1 or 2....just about the time they wake up from their naps. Nasty jet lag! Messing with everything....

Despite the jet lag, today was a great day! We walked to the tube station and rode all the way in to Holborn, where we took another walk to the British Museum. The British Museum was actually founded in 1753!

The British Museum houses so many treasures from not only Great Britain, but from around the world! Excavations from Egypt brought quite a few such treasures into the hands of Europe and the English.

One of the most interesting treasures brought back from the excavations is the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone was key in learning Egpytian hieroglyphs. As you can see in the picture above, there are three different languages. The first is Anicient Egyptian hieroglyphics. The second, Demotic Egyptian and finally, Greek. Each section contains the same text, only in a different language. Using the Greek to translate the Demotic, and then using Demotic to translate the hieroglyphs, the code was cracked and the rest is history.

There were so many things to see at the British Museum! From Egypt to Assyria, from Mummies to Norse Swords it took us 4 or 5 hours to get through the museum!

Another interesting thing we saw was the wrapped mummy of a young woman named Cleopatra. Although she wasn't THE Cleopatra, it was still interesting to see! Because of CAT scans and X-rays, British scientists were able to determine how old she was at the time of death. She was 17.

One last AMAZING thing we saw at the BM.

This is one of two pillars that are called the Gate of Nimrud, built by Assyrian king, Ahsirnapal II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurnasirpal_II). They are GIGANTIC!

After the British Museum, we grabbed a bite to eat from a nearby TESCO (small-ish grocery store) and walked to the Bloomsbury Square Gardens. We loved eating in the open air! A pigeon came waddleing by, so I threw a piece of bread at him. Then another pigeon came by...and another! Before too long there were 5 pigeons in front of me! Just when I thought I was going to have to hide my lunch, a little old man came walking into the park with a bag of bread crumbs. He dumped them on the ground and pigeons came from EVERYWHERE!!! It was funny to watch...

After lunch we took a tube to St. James Park and went to see Buckingham Palace, but unfortunately, it was closed today!!! So we had to walk back to the tube...but we decided to hop over to the Victoria and Albert Museum (commonly referred to as the V&A)! It was fantastic! What gets me the most about London Museums is that the buildings are phenomenal! And even better than that, they were built to house museums!

One of the highlights of the V&A was the Raphael Gallery. Raphael was a famous Italian artist from the late 15th century-early 16th. His work is PHENOMENAL. He was a contemporary of da Vinci and Michaelangelo. When I walked into the gallery I had no idea what to expect. What I saw floored me.

Huge paintings! Room sized, at least! They actually weren't meant to be paintings, but cartoons for tapestries! Artists would paint a "cartoon" or a guide for weavers as they worked on the tapestries. Fantastic!

Well, after looking around at the V&A for a couple of hours we decided to head back to the hotel. It has been an awesome day!

For anyone who is still curious about the title of this post (and for those of you that actually scrolled back up to check the title :D ) here's an explanation!

When riding the tube, there is a recorded announcement made for every station you come to. A lovely British woman's voice says "The next stop is Charing Cross" or "Please step away from the doors". My favorite however, is, "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform". Mind the Gap!

LONDON!

So, after much diliberation and a lot of planning, Mom, DeAnna and I stepped onto a plane in Salt Lake City that took us to Chicago, got on another plane that took us to Philedelphia and finally, we boarded a plane that brought us to LONDON! AH! I still can't believe that we are here, even though we've been here for since Tuesday!

Yesterday, we went into London to meet up with some friends of mine. We went to so many things! We met them in front of Buckigham Palace, at the Victoria Memorial Statue.

(Buckingham! Note the crowds!)

(Victorian Memorial)

I told them 10:30am, although we didn't get there till around 11. Never, ever, ever ever have someon meet you by the Victoria Memorial between the hours of 10am and 12 noon!! The reason for this is because the Changing of the Guard occurs at 11am, and there are HUNDREDS of people EVERYWHERE! Luckily, our friends, Em and Cath are very tall, so we could see them easily. We waited and saw the changing of the guard, because we were already there, and because we couldn't really get out! The bobbies (police) were directing traffic, but mostly holding it as the band and the new set of guards came down the street.

Eventually we got out, and made our way up the Mall past St. James' Park. It was a pretty walk and I had to pinch myself a couple times because I still couldn't believe we were in London

(View of Big Ben through the lawn chairs)

(DeAnna and I in a telephone booth)

(In front of the Trafalgar Square Statue)

We walked to Trafalgar Square and went inside the National Gallery, an art gallery that holds art from some of the most famous painters alive! We saw paintings by Renoir, da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Monet! When we waked in to the room with the Monet paintings, I was floored to see his painting of the bridge over his lily pond! I love that painting! I seriously sat and stared at it for 5 minutes! This is the real deal! We also saw Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers!

(Right outside the doors of the gallery)

After the National Gallery we decided to grab some lunch...we went across the square to Tesco's and bought some sandwhiches. Then we hopped on a double decker bus that took us right past Big Ben (which is actually the name of the bell inside of the clock tower) and the Houses of Parliament. We hopped off by Westminster Abbey and then walked over to the tube (subway) station right under Big Ben. Along our walk we got to stand in the shadow of Big Ben! We got off the tube at Victoria Embankment and ate our lunch in the park.

After we finished lunch we hopped on the tube again to go to Covent Garden.

It is an open air market under the shelter or what appears to be an old train station. There are shops inside and out, and performers everywhere! There are human statues and acrobats, as well as musicians! I bought a scarf there!

We hopped back on the tube to go to the Natural History Museum, where Cath and Em (along with their friend Katie) showed us the giant whale and the giant baby! It was an experience I won't forget!

(The giant whale...and us!)

Too jet lagged today to go out. I'll have another update tomorrow!