Climbing Stairs is Fun

Well, hello my lovely readers.  I have officially been in London for a week now, and it has been amazing!  I can't believe I have only two weeks left.  I have fallen in love with London, and not just for its delicious doughnuts. I love the people and the culture, and of course, the accents.

Anywho, enough with the love fest.  Let's get on with today's events in London. We started off the day at the Museum of London, which I had actually never heard of before, but I was really impressed with what it had to offer.

It was all about London, of course, and was organized in chronological order.  It includes exhibits depicting life in the London area from 450,000 BC to present day. I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of prehistoric time, but I was really interested in the medieval section, which discussed the Black Plague and the Great Fire of 1666. (So I like the morbid stuff, give me a break.)  It was also very enlightening, because I am by no means a scholar of European History, and this museum laid it out in a nice, visual way that helped me to understand this country's great history in a whole new way.

Mosaic = Awesome

A tablet from the original London Bridge

The costume Pauline Chase wore when she played Peter Pan at the West End in 1911.

If you're in London, I highly recommend this museum, especially near the beginning of your trip, because it will really help you to appreciate London for all its worth.  Plus, a Sherlock Holmes exhibit is opening in October, so I might just have to figure out a way to travel back here to check that out.

Our next stop was St. Paul's Cathedral.  We had a picnic on the grass outside of the cathedral, and were serenaded with some talented guitar music courtesy of the City of London Festival.  They have put guitars around London in upturned rowboats, and people are free to play them regardless of their skill.  Luckily, the guy that was playing while we were eating was super talented, playing "American Pie" with only 5 strings on the guitar.  It was lovely.

We had a guided tour scheduled, but when we went inside to find our tour guide, it turned out that they forgot to put us in their book.  So this kind elderly lady gave up her lunch break to give us a whirlwind tour before the London Symphony Orchestra started practicing and we wouldn't be able to hear her talk any more.  We learned some fascinating facts about St. Paul's Cathedral, and our tour guide was so adorable I could hardly stand it.  For all of you book nerds, and more specifically, Harry Potter nerds, we visited Dean's Staircase. Dean's Staircase is a floating staircase, which means the stairs are resting on each other, rather than a central pillar. It makes for a stunning effect. It's in the third, fourth, and eighth Harry Potter films, including this scene:

Don't mind the subtitles.

She also took us to the American Memorial Chapel, which contains a Roll of Honour with names of more than 28,000 Americans who gave their lives during WWII.  They had stained glass in the apse, with symbols for each of the fifty states, and I easily found the beehive that symbolizes Utah.  It was great to see a little bit of my home here in London.

View from the almost top.

I spy with my little eye a bridge that was in Harry Potter. ...And the Globe Theater.

Today's photography focus was architecture.  Here's my attempt at framing.

View from the very, very top.

After St. Paul's, we attempted to get a library card, but the nice librarian with a great beard told us we have to live here for at least 3 months to get one.  So we just ventured home and ate some Oreos.

I completed my day with climbing up and down our apartment stairs (61 stairs, and steep ones at that) three more times to do some laundry.  Oh, and I bought a ticket to see Richard Armitage in the flesh next week.  So that's just a little bit exciting.

Tomorrow we are off to Oxford, where I am excited to experience a bunch of bookish adventures.  See you then!