London (Day 2)

I woke up a little late and got a late start - something that probably wouldn't have happened if I wasn't traveling by myself.

My hostel was right by St. Paul's Cathedral, so I thought, "What the hell? It's right there." St. Paul's was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, who is also buried there. His grave is a lot less elaborate than I would have guessed. Also, it is one of the more impressively decorated Cathedral I have visited (right behind San Marcos in Venice). I climbed up the dome of St Paul's, too, which was a pretty impressive view. There is a building, which you can see from the dome (and all over the place) that looks like an egg. I told Iori about the egg shaped building and he asked me if someone told me that it was an egg shape or did I come up with that myself. Apparently, some think it looks like a cucumber (though I think British English has a different word for this - Iori?). I came up with the egg shape by myself, by the way.

From there, I thought I ought to see another church and made my way toward Westminster Abbey. On the double decker there, it passed through Trafalgar Square, which is kind of cool, but what was even cooler was that the National Gallery was right there, which was on the Iori itinerary of London. So now I knew where that was, which is more than I could say for just about everywhere in London.

Westminster Abbey, which I'd seen from the outside the day before, was also very nice from the inside. It's still a working church, as they love to publicize. While I was in Poet's corner, the whole place came to a standstill for prayer, which they apparently do every hour or so. There's a lot of different things to see in the Abbey. The most beautiful part of it is the Lady Chapel. It was built by Henry VII. Near the entrance to the Lady Chapel is St Edward's Chair, on which the Kings and Queens are seated when they are crowned. The poet's corner is also neat. The first poet buried there was Chaucer, of Canterbury Tale fame, though he wasn't buried there for his writing but for his service as a clerk or some sort of tax guy for the King. Then followed names like Tennyson and Lord Byron. Dickens, Kipling, and P. B. Shelley are also there. After walking through the rest of the Abbey and getting to the front entrance, you go on a hunt for the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin (and I still don't understand why he's buried in a church since he didn't believe in God). I asked a guy for some help spotting them and, besides showing them to me, he also pointed a memorial to another guy, Alfred Russel Wallace, who worked on the theory of evolution at the same time as Darwin.

After that, I went off to the National Gallery. The reason I want to go there was to see some Monet and Van Gogh and other impressionist painters. So I got a map and completely skipped everything up until the mid to late 1800's, since the place was in chronological order. They had one piece by Van Gogh that was very different than his other work. It was of crabs and the colors was much darker than I normally associate with Van Gogh.

After this, I wondered around for a little around parliament and on the other side of the river. I got on a bus that said "London Bridge" because you always here about it falling down. Turns out, when I got to London Bridge, it was actually very boring. Just your run-of-the-mill bridge. But it is within walking distance of Tower Bridge, the most famous bridge in the world (though I'd argue that the Golden Gate Bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge would be more famous). I walked accross that and went by the Tower of London, which was the stronghold of the Royalty throughout the centuries. The Kings kept adding onto the thing. The coolest part of the Tower of London, though, is that it had a moat. A functioning moat.

I ate at some pub pretty close to Trafalgar Square (I took a bus from the Tower). I got some nachos and fish and chips. The nachos because I miss Mexican food and the fish and chips because it's London - that's what people eat there. Both were delicious. I also had so ale because that's the type of beer that goes with fish and chips, I think. Whether or not I'm right, the ale was very good. I also got a lesson from the bartender about the different types of beer, of which I could understand about 50% because of his accent. They other waiter was pretty nice and talked to me while I ate and then invited me, if I wanted to wait an hour for him, to go to Soho to the bars. Not that I didn't want to go, but I didn't want to go. He seemed like the type of guy who might try to hit on me, and I didn't really feel like that's how I wanted to spend my time in London - fending off gay dudes.

I went back to the hostel and went to sleep after that.