First thing this morning we caught the tube to Westminster. On the tube you have no geographic reference points, so its slightly surprising, after getting on a train in suburban Islington, to walk up a flight of stairs and see this:
Guess we're in London.
Our first stop this morning as Westminster Abbey, which neither Helen or Thomas had ever seen.
Love the random head at the bottom of that picture.
Inside the Abbey we couldn't take photos but we had a great time walking from memorial to memorial with Jeremy Irons intoning the history of the building through our audio tour thingies. Thomas learned that gentlemen have to take off their hats (or flat caps) when entering a church but ladies are exempt. The Abbey is lovely, but some chapels are so crowded with memorials all you can see is a tangle of uplifted marble arms, wings and halos. We particularly liked the Tudor Lady Chapel behind the altar, where Henry VII and his wife are buried. In the chapels on either side are Elizabeth I, Mary I and Mary Queen of Scots. All the medieval Edwards are here as well, but Helen's vote for the most touching tomb was an unremarked statue of a woman in Tudor dress, lying on her side and looking at the next memorial, which was a baby in a cradle. No idea who she was.
We spent a long time at the Abbey and eventually had to crash in the crypt cafe and recuperate while being roundly ignored and forgotten by the staff.
We headed over Westminster Bridge to the South bank of the Thames and walked East, stopping for sandwiches and a view of the barges sailing up and down the river.
The views were fantastic. The skyline has changed significantly since Helen and Robert were here last, but some things stay the same.
We popped into Tate Modern to watch dedicated art lovers seeing the latest installation (a sound and light installation, the operation of which is dependant on the activities of a tank of micro organisms. You can't make this stuff up.) These are the art lovers lying on the floor.
The Globe was Shakespeare's theatre, which was reconstructed in the 1990s to be as accurate to the Tudaor / Stuart period as possible. Except for the sprinkler system in the thatch, which was required because thatch has been banned in London since the great fire.
Our guide was a woman with an impressive black furry hat and beautifully rounded vowels who murmered interesting facts into her lapel microphone while we listened on headphones, which allowed the students rehearsing on the stage to ignore us. This was historically very inaccurate, as we should have been shouting, drinking, joining in when they got to bits we knew and occasionally having a surreptitious wee in the corner. But I don't think our guide was aiming for that much accuracy.
The theatre is almost entirely made of wood and plaster, but is painted to look like marble. The moss on the thatch is apparently a winter feature. In summer it dries out and is picked off by magies, who pelt the groundlings (people standing in front of the stage) with the dried lumps.
By the time we exited through the gift shop it was dark and cold. However, we were excited about crossing the millenium bridge, so on we went. Helen crossed the bridge the day it was opened back in 2000. The following day it was closed again because the swaying motion was causing people to grip the sides and sob. Having been made more ridgid / boring (in Helen's opinion) we made it across without so much as a wobble.
Once home we ate dhal and played Lego Indianna Jones on the PS3 because no one could really move anymore.
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