The 2nd full day in London is a sight-seeing day. Bruce (the professor) had scheduled us a tour of St. Paul's Cathedral in the morning and a ride on the London Eye in the evening. The in-between time is for more independent walking self-tours.
I awake to a refreshing cool breeze, the sounds of the city waking up, and...rain! Oh boy, better take my bralie with me today! The hot and humid weather is gone now.
After a delicious breakfast of hashbrowns, sausage and eggs I am ready to negotiate the underground system to get to St. Paul's Cathedral. All goes smoothly, and we congregate on the front steps.
Yes, this is the place in Mary Poppins where the bird woman sits! They've done a lot of cleaning since the filming of that movie - in fact, the cleaning has been going on for 10 years and has cost 2 million pounds so far to clean off 300 years of grime!
The birds sure like this woman, although I doubt she's selling bread crumbs for tuppence!
The scale of the columns is truly amazing.
After our "supertour" of the beautiful cathedral, smaller chapels, and the crypt we brave the 528-step climb to the top of St. Paul's. There are 3 galleries at different levels as you ascend. The first is an interior gallery called the Whispering Gallery. Because of it's round shape inside a dome, you can whisper along the wall on one side and be heard clear across it by somebody with the ear near the wall. That was pretty cool! The other two galleries are exterior walkways. There is a building code in the city requiring that no building obstruct the view of St. Paul's from key places in the city and this means that the view from the cathedral is fabulous...if you can handle the scary stairs up to see it:
After spending quality time atop the cathedral, we break up into groups and go touring about. We walk along the Millenium bridge - a pedestrian bridge that serves as an axis between St. Paul's and the Tate Modern. I find it spectacular and take one too many pictures of its structure and the views from it. One of my companions for the day captures one of me with St. Paul's in the background:
We discover a piano along the walkway, begging us to play it. So we do!
Then, it's time for lunch and we go looking for a grocery in an effort to repeat the picnic experience from the day before. Unfortunately, it's a bit too touristy of an area, and the shops and markets are a little spendier than we expected. We wander down some alleys and end up at the Little Dorrit - a cute little sandwich bar run by a lovely Swedish girl who is very patient with our indecisiveness and waits on us hand and foot. We took our time with lunch because the environment was so comfortable! Outside, we see a convertible Smart car drive by, and the cameras come out. It is only later that we realize Smart makes all kinds of different models of cars from the one we are used to seeing back home.
We try walking around to see more, but the rain and wind get the best of us and we duck inside the Tate Modern art gallery. Right inside, there is a HUGE exhibition space that is empty today but sometimes houses enormous sculptures and the like. Time only allows us to look thru the exhibits on one floor and then we have to high-tail it to the Eye to meet the rest of the group for our 5:00 "flight".
The London Eye is right on the river and is seriously enormous. Each of those little blobs going around is a capsule that can comfortably hold 10-12 people sitting, with walking room all around the bench! It moves continuously, only stopping if someone has trouble boarding or dismounting while it is in motion.
Bruce waits at the base to make sure we all find it ok and climb aboard.
It is still raining as we begin our slow revolution. The structure of the Eye keeps my attention for awhile, and then the views all around. They are quite spectacular, but I am thinking that they would be even more so if we hadn't just seen nearly the same perspective from the top of St. Paul's.
Pictures aren't turning out well with all the water spots on the capsule, so we take some fun shots inside!
At the top, the Eye stops moving for a time, and while we wait the rain lets up and the sun comes out! We enjoy this break in gloomy weather in a mostly glass capsule high above the city. Once down, we hear that other passengers in our neighboring capsules found the lack of motion a bit more disturbing than we did!
1 comment:
You're a dork--only you would know this from Mary Poppins! ;)
I think the Eye woulda scared me completely to death. And it is moving while you're trying to get on and off?! Insanity.
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