London Day 4

Today we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, the first Anglican church that was established after the English Reformation. (That is when King Henry VIII decided to be the head of the church so that he could divorce and remarry!) There has been a church on this site since the year AD 604, so most likely it was first a Catholic Church. It has been burned or otherwise destroyed and rebuilt 4 or 5 times. The current building was designed by Christopher Wren back in 1675. Some of the famous people who are buried here include the architect, Christopher Wren, Admiral Nelson, and the Duke of Wellington. John Donne, the poet, was Dean of St. Paul's in 1621. Today the building is still amazing. We toured the main cathedral floor, where there was a service underway. The clergy here carry on as if nothing is unusual even though dozens of tourists are wandering around looking up and listening to their audio guides. We toured the crypt, below the main floor, where more people are buried, and today they have a cafe with tables and chairs sitting right on top of the graves! We stopped there for a rest ourselves.



It's a good thing we took a break because we decided to go ahead and climb up into the Dome, to see how far we could go before passing out. There are three levels: you can climb up 257 steps to the whispering gallery. We tried it out, and it is true. Garold stood on the opposite side and I could hear him! Then if you dare you can climb another 119 steps to the Stone Gallery and have a pretty awesome view of the city.



We climbed the final 152 steps, all the way to the top of the dome, to the Golden Gallery, where we were rewarded with the most totally awesome view, 365 feet above the Cathedral Floor.



After we climbed down the 528 steps we took a bus ride down to the Tower of London to catch a boat ride on the Thames. We sailed under the Tower Bridge down to Westminster Abbey and back again. Our tour guides were two young men with distinctive cockney accents and a wry sense of humor. As they pointed out the buildings along the bank of the Thames, they told us that the Tate Modern was one of the few free attractions in London, and if you decide to visit you will see why it is free! Ha!



After the boat tour we went in search of the oldest pub in London, the Cheshire Cheese. There was a very small bar and a restaurant at the street level, and down 2 or 3 levels below the street there was another bar and additional seating. We went down to the lowest level and ordered our dinner: Steak and ale pie (for me) and Chicken and mushroom pie (for Garold) plus the ever present chips (french fries) and English peas. It was pretty good and reasonably priced at about 5 pounds each.