Friday dawned cloudy, a little rainy, and cold. We headed over to St. Paul’s for the second time, though this time it wasn’t free and we did actually get to tour the entire cathedral. All four of us made it up to the first upper gallery, the Whispering Gallery, which looks down into the cathedral. Supposedly you can whisper into the dome and someone on the opposite side of the dome can hear what you say, but there were so many people and so much noise that it didn’t quite work. Erin’s parents had had enough of the stairs at that point, so they returned to the cathedral floor while we trekked up to the Stone Gallery and then to the Golden Gallery, both outside the building with views over London. I think the Golden Gallery is almost as high up as the London Eye goes! The whole experience took close to an hour with more stairs than any of the other towers we’ve had the pleasure of climbing in Europe. When we met back up with Erin’s parents we all headed over to the Tower of London.
The audio guide at the Tower of London is great! There are lots of entertaining stories about failed escape attempts and snooty prisoners held at the Tower. The downside of our visit as the extreme wind and cold. And the crowd. There were so many people that we decided right away that seeing the Crown Jewels would be near impossible. Erin and her mom had already seen the jewels before, but John was looking forward to it. Alas, the line was so long and we got there late in the day so the Tower probably would have closed before we even got in to see the Crown Jewels. The upside of our visit was that we got to see people dressed in medieval attire, playing the parts of kings, queens, court jesters, and musicians. We even got to hear the musicians play on authentic instruments the music of the medieval period. It was a satisfactory visit. Next time we’ll know to get there early in the day to see the Crown Jewels.
Friday evening we went to see the great Harrods. When we first arrived the place was a mad house (right after people got off of work), so we opted to go have some dinner and come back. On the recommendation of Erin’s sister, we tried to eat at a nearby out-of-the-way pub, but they weren’t serving dinner. We ended up just down the street at The Wilton Arms for fish ‘n’ chips and Guinness pie. Harrods was extraordinarily less crowded after food and drinks. We got to see the Egyptian Room and the Food Halls, the highlights for us since we did not really want to actually shop. Well, we did end up buying a little something…some chocolates which lasted us about a week.
On Saturday we finally made it to Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abby. It has become terribly complicated to get a tour of Parliament, so we settled for seeing the outside of the building. Also, it seems only U.K. citizens are allowed to go up inside Big Ben…if you apply 6 months in advance, pay a fee, arrive 30 minutes early, and leave your first-born child as a deposit before entering. We did go inside Westminster Abby. Reading the gravestones is fascinating, and of course standing in Poet’s Corner is amazing. Friday was actually quite sunny in the morning, so after Westminster Abby we roamed through St. James Park and arrived at Buckingham Palace just as the Changing of the Guard was taking place. We hadn’t planned to see the changing of the guard, which is lucky since by the time we got there we were so far away from the gates that we couldn’t see what was happening anyway. Anyway, we had already seen the incredibly long but interesting Changing of the Guard at Windsor Castle. We walked through Green Park to the underground and saw The Ritz (as filmed in “Notting Hill”) then headed off to the Portobello Road Market (also seen in the movie “Notting Hill”). Unfortunately it started raining while we were at the market and we neglected to try to find any information before we left about where to find The Travel Book Shop or the house with the blue door (from the movie “Notting Hill”), so we didn’t get through the whole market before heading back to the apartment.
One of the fun, quintessentially "London" things we did was go to afternoon tea Saturday afternoon. We stayed quite close to Kensington Palace, and The Orangery restaurant at the palace has excellent afternoon tea. It was nice to be inside out of the rain and cold for a bit while enjoying tea and scones and cake. It must have been all the walking around in the cold and rain that made us all so tired Saturday evening. We had to pack up anyway, so just got frozen pizzas at the Tesco down the street and watched “Sense and Sensibility” while eating pizza and packing Saturday night.
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