London England (St. Paul’s Cathedral, London Eye, Buckingham Palace)

 1 August 2024 - London England (St. Paul’s Cathedral, London Eye, Buckingham Palace)

About halfway through our London stay and we have made good progress on our bucket list. We walked to St. Paul’s Cathedral from the Strand and Fleet Street.  There are beautiful Victorian-age and older buildings on these streets, as well as modern skyscrapers. We are going to walk this way again before we leave London - I really enjoyed looking at all the buildings. After touring St. Paul’s, we stayed for an Even-prayer service and an organ concert. The organist, Martin Baker, improvised to a showing of the1925 film version of The Phantom of the Opera. The organ is magnificent, originally built in 1694 and expanded/modernized over the years; the pipes are located in several locations throughout the huge cathedral. It was an amazing experience! A few notes from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom even showed up!

On a semi-cloudy day, we rode the London Eye, a gigantic Ferris wheel which was built to celebrate the Millennium.  It was supposed to be a temporary structure, but when the city realized what a huge money maker it was, they kept it up.  During tourist season, it can generate over $250K of income daily. The views are spectacular!

We headed back to Buckingham Palace one day for a guided tour of the place.  We toured the State Rooms, the Mews, and the King’s Gallery.  We could only take pictures in the Mews. The State Rooms include a room with famous paintings including works of van Dyck, Rembrandt, Titian, Ruebens and Vermeer, as well as sculptures featuring several by Canova. The Throne Room displayed thrones made for several of the monarchs, from Queen Victoria on. Most of the rooms were decorated in the early 1800s and remain fundamentally unchanged. The rooms were beautiful in a symmetrical, Georgian style.  They are in distinct contrast to the robust and vibrant room designs we saw everywhere in Italy. The King’s Gallery had lots of photographs of the Royals, both portrait mode and casual.  It was nice to see pics of Elizabeth as a child and young adult. Coronation pictures were displayed of Elizabeth’s family, her father, herself and Charles. Many of them I have seen in articles and specials about the Royals. To have your whole life on public display - hard to imagine how to do that in a graceful manner.

The Gold State Coach was built a couple hundred years ago.  Because of its age, weight and lack of maneuverability, it is only used at coronations and jubilees.  It is pulled by eight horses at a walking pace.

In the middle of the parking lot for Charing Cross railway station is a memorial to Queen Eleanor, a reconstruction of the medieval Eleanor cross erected by Edward I in memory of his first wife.

We stumbled across the London Chinatown area while roaming around one afternoon.  It seems to be mostly outdoor cafes with a few markets.

This is a Swiss clock which has a very interesting hourly routine of rotating figures and ringing bells. It is on a plaza between a mega M&M store and a mega Lego store with lots of American fast food places (McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, TGIF).  And there were a million, supposedly Americans, in the area.

Statue of Eros in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

Leicester Square, a popular place to sit, eat and people watch, has this very nice statue of Mary Poppins. New (installed in 2020), it is part of a series of sculptures in the area celebrating cinema.

The building behind the statue is the Royal Courts of Justice.

This Temple Bar memorial stands where Christopher Wren’s Gate once stood, marking the separation of Westminster from the City of London.  Queen Victoria is on one side, her husband on the other

St. Paul’s Cathedral, an Anglican Church which is the mother church for the Diocese of London. The original Catholic church was founded in 604 AD. This church was completed in 1710, replacing the one that was destroyed in the Great Fire, and is considered Christopher Wren’s greatest accomplishment. The cathedral was the tallest building in London from 1710 to 1963.

St. Paul’s was where Charles and Diana were married. 

When we were wandering around the gardens of the church, we found this statue of John Wesley.

Wren was strongly influenced by the cathedrals he saw in Italy and wanted to recreate their splendor in England.  The Anglican heads thought it was “too Catholic” and he had to make do is much plainer interiors.  It wasn’t until long past his death (actually during Queen Victoria’s time) that the mosaics of the ceilings were installed. She did not like the church and complained that it was too dark and dingy.

There were some sculptures, but not the quantity that we saw in the Italy cathedrals.  This very large 20 foot crucifix commemorates WW1 is part of a pair. The protuberances represent war torn buildings, both historical and contemporary (in Afghanistan and other current sites of war.)

The quire (pronounced choir to us Americans), was dismantled and hidden away in WWII after a bomb entered the nave and narrowly missed destroying it. It has since been reassembled and restored.

The high altar.

The two halves of the original organ facing each other.  There are at least 3 other areas for organ pipes in the cathedral.  Several of the pipes are original to the first organ.

The mosaics are composed of colored glass and gold leaf.

The main organ console.  It was fascinating watching the organist play this instrument.

The baptismal font sits near the entrance to the church. It’s huge!

There are few paintings in the cathedral. This one is being restored.

Below the church is the crypt.  Many famous people are buried here. This is a memorial to General Cornwallis.

Lord Nelson is buried in the cathedral.

Duke Wellington’s memorial.

A death mask of Christopher Wren and a fragment from his coffin.

The London Eye is a larger version of the Ferris wheel we rode in Las Vegas.  Very touristy, but great views.  It took about 30 minutes to go around once.

Big Ben from above.

The Parliament Building.

St. Paul’s dome amidst all the building cranes.  Lots of construction going on in London.

Buckingham Palace.

We went back to Buckingham Palace for a tour of the buildings.  Ran into these guys marching somewhere.

The palace is huge!

The Mews (garage area) had a number of coaches and automobiles on display.  There were stables also, but the horses were not there.  I assume they were out in the countryside somewhere enjoying their summer vacation.  Most of these coaches are a couple centuries old and pretty fragile.  I read that most of them are very uncomfortable to ride in because of their lack of suspension.

I think this is the newest coach.  The Diamond Jubilee State Coach was used to transport Charles during his coronation.  It also was used during Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. It has an aluminum body, electric windows, air conditioning and hydraulic suspension.

Another view of the Gold State Coach.

We encountered several protests during our stay.  This one was quite large with a very big police presence.  One day, when we were on Regent Street, shopping for some dress pants for Russ, we inadvertently got caught in the middle of a peaceful walking protest about Bangladesh. Took a bit to get ourselves untangled from that one.

Just across the street from our hotel, flanking the river is a wall commemorating those who died of COVID in England.  Over 250,000 people.  250,000 hearts were painted on the walls for blocks and  people were invited to write in the hearts, the names of the people they had lost during the pandemic. Kept thinking about what one million hearts would look like. That is how many were lost in the USA. Extremely sad.