There are a lot of churches in London.
No, seriously, there are a LOT of churches in London.
First, a disclaimer: this posting is dated about 24 hours, as jet lag finally caught up to me and I crashed in the evening, unable to do anything except stare blankly into the brightly colored walls of my room, drink water, and try to rest. But now back to you previously scheduled programming:
Eleanor, our guide for the day, told us that there were over 80 churches that she knew about in the Old London Area, which doesn’t include many of the suburbs, or even most of the area that feel like it should be London. (Why draw city borders in a random intersection?)
Our day started with an interesting breakfast: coffee (which I didn’t drink, as I’m caffeine-averse), juice, or milk, accompanied by ham and cheese sandwiches, corn flakes cereal, mixed fruit (the canned, school stuff), and some stuff that no-one was quite sure whether it was gravy or oatmeal by looking at it. Fortunately, my guess of oatmeal wasn’t terribly far off, as I had already smothered it with granola before someone said they thought it was gravy.
Turns out it was grits of some sort–at least that’s the conclusion we decided after we ate it.
English food is incredibly bland.
After breakfast, we were lead on a tour of London. During the tour, in fact, Eleanor stated that we don’t really need to mention the food to any English people because they all already know–which is why there’s so many other nationalities’ food available in England.
We passed a number of sights, including the British Library,
St. Paul’s Cathedral – did I mention that there are a lot of churches in London?
The remains of a Roman church, containing both a public garden and a private residence that was purchased a few years ago for 10 million pounds, if my memory serves me correctly (where the city rejected the buyer’s build permit to put an elevator in for the 6 stories up to the residence)
Postman’s Park, the location where a memorial to the “everyday heroes,” civilians who passed away doing a great service to someone, such as saving a life, is
The London Bridge while it is allowing passage for a ship to sail through
The infamous OXO headquarters, who built their company name directly into the window panes of their building to circumvent the “no advertising” law
Westminster Abbey, where Kenzie and I walked around one of the smaller churches nearby (the Abbey itself was closed at the time)
James Park
and Buckingham Palace.
Afterwards, we parted company with Eleanor, and Kenzie, Hannah, Rachael, and I headed for the National Gallery.
The National Gallery. Lo and behold, every painting was related somehow to the Christian church: whether as a scene from the Bible or a parable or story relating to Mary, Jesus, or any of the other individuals in the Bible. I get the feeling that churches might be kind of a big deal in London…
After visiting the gallery (and taking photos, to the irk of the other visitors there), the four of us split into two groups, and Kenzie and I took our first successful subway ride (Which Eleanor said is pronounced the “tch-ube” instead of “tube” by Londoners. We gave our patronage to a local pub for a late lunch, where I had an excellent turkey burger and chips. (Remember, chips in England are french fries, not Doritos!) We then proceeded to walk in the opposite direction we intended to and found ourselves lost in the city.
Fortunately, after walking another block we spotted a landmark we recognized: a little park. Thus, we made it back in time to get ready to see Les Miserables.
As luck would have it, this evening was when jet lag finally caught up to me. I had been so busy up to this point that now that I had a free moment, I was utterly exhausted for the performance. Drowsy from lack of sleep (its hard to sleep in a different bed when you’re so used to the ones at home!), exhaustion from walking all day, and the realization that I would go about five hours without eating finally demanded my attention.
Thus, the moment the music made its first crescendo, I had a splitting headache. And forgot to bring an ibuprofen. Awesome. I was really looking forward to enjoying the performance, as I have somehow managed to go my entire life not seeing Les Mis. Not the movie nor the play, not reading the book nor the script. My opinion of the play, thus, was resting completely on this performance. Likely due to the headache, I had a difficult time hearing the lyrics of the first three songs (which also didn’t bode well, so I asked someone nearby to explain what had happened in the first act during intermission – I must be fearless!).
NOTE: Now that I’ve fought off the jet lag, I can say with certainty that it was a brilliant performance. Five out of five, would recommend to friends. Its obvious that a ton of work went into it, and the acting was, in my humble opinion, impeccable.