London's Big Ben, Westminster Churches, Etc. 07-13-08

On Sunday we went to Mass at Westminster Cathedral. Once again, photos of the inside were not allowed, but it didn't make much difference because the inside looks to have been mostly gutted for repairs (I hope not more hideous modern remodeling). The architecture is a Byzantine response to the Neo-Gothic architecture of Westminster Abbey (or at least something I read somewhere said that). =)

I don't know what this first picture is, but it's neat. The second one is St. Martin de Porres (also Anglican *sigh*), or at least I think so. Andy will know. =)

This is Westminster Abbey. We didn't go inside because they were having a service (imagine that! on a Sunday of all days!), and that would be rude. =) So we took pictures of the outside. Not really satisfying, but oh well.

Big Ben! Did you know that Big Ben is attached to Parliament which is that huge freaking building stuck to Big Ben? Who knew?! (besides Andy, who also happens to be looking handsome as usual in the last photo of Big Ben)

Some miscellaneous pictures of Parliament Square, which oddly enough is in front of Parliament (Westminster Abbey was on one side of the square with Parliament on one of the adjoining sides, I think).

Yes, those are protesters in tents out there. They're protesting the Iraq War and had some obscenely high death count up (2 million or something), which I haven't seen in relation to the war except on their signs. Somehow I think if 2 million anybody's had died, the media would have let us know. But whatever...

Big Park 07-13-08

After Mass we had lunch at Pizza Hut which was, pretty decent (it was Pizza Hut) until a group of maybe 20 or 30 Italian teenagers came in with their supervisor who demanded that the manager give them a special deal according to her rules. She was loud, they were loud, it was annoying. I wanted the manager to tell them he didn't care what she wanted, he wanted them to be quiet or to get out, but he didn't, so we left soon after they arrived. I think the time when a parent acts out of sacrificial love the most must surely be when they are teenagers - they were wearing the silliest clothes, and I don't know how I will ever make it through my own children's teenage years if they do the same...

Anyways, once we were done we went over to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, but those photos will come later. After those places, I was ready to avoid some crowds and be a bit lazy, so we went to some big park to relax. That's where these pictures are from. =)

This is me being a brat for the camera, and me making up for it so my mom will have a nice picture of me. =)

This is a big field in the middle of London. Very exciting. Also apparently sneeze conducive to Cheryl. I had one of my legendary sneezing attacks which put me out for the rest of the day. I'm not sure if dinner was as bland as it tasted or if I just couldn't taste it...

The lake reminded us very much of Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte*, so we took pictures. Otherwise I suppose it wasn't very exciting.

This is the statue of some queen. Maybe Andy remembers who. It was somewhere close to this pretty little gated garden that reminded us of the Secret Garden (with the exception of the secret part). ;)

*I hope Andy is pleased that I finally looked up some facts instead of him having to do my fact checking. =D

Buckingham Palace 07-13-08

We couldn't get into Buckingham Palace, apparently we were about a month early for the whole two months or so when you're able to tour the place. Big disappointment that one... At any rate there's a pretty fountain and some pretty gates and a pretty little park just outside, which Andy and I took pictures of and walked through on our way to Mass at Westminster Cathedral (not Abbey, the Abbey doesn't have Mass).

These are our photos from there. =)

Tower of London* 07-12-08

It turns out that the Tower of London is more like a fort or something with several towers all inside a wall. So, it's more like TowerS of London, but whatever. They can call it what they want I suppose. There's a rather large square building that was apparently quite impressive when William of Normandy built it in the 1066 after conquering the Saxons . It houses some/all of the royal jewels along with some old weapons and armour and junk. They're kind of neat I suppose. 0=) We don't have a photo of it, though.

All of the queens that good ol' King Henry VIII (you know that great defender of the Catholic faith who killed his wives, his priests and his Protestants with tremendous zeal and fervor) were executed here. I was disappointed that they didn't talk about St. Thomas More (apparently the only identifiable remains are his head, which his daughter stole from where it was hanging from London Bridge [maybe] and was eventually transported to somewhere way outside of London, which was disappointing), but they did talk about a priest who was imprisoned and escaped. There was also a Protestant woman who was killed. He wasn't a very nice man at all at all. Though it's possible St. Thomas wasn't beheaded in the "tower" but rather in some more public space (King Henry only used the "tower" for "private" executions of which the public might not approve).

They had some lovely drawings and remains of the apparatuses of torture. There was one where the victim was placed on their knees and then bent forward so that their butt was over their feet and their head was over their knees within a rather unholy looking device consisting of two curved metal "straps" which then compressed them. It looked pretty dreadful to say the least. We don't have any photos of that either. I just wanted to tell you about it. And now, without further adieu, the pictures!

Apparently this is the gate through which prisoners came. It was truly fearsome too - all those tourists stopping up the flow really put a kink in my day!

So you're probably wondering why all of the photos are from OUTSIDE the "tower". That's because when we got to London we discovered most of the buttons on the camera weren't working, so we couldn't zoom in or out or change the aperture speed or whatever it is you do to adjust for lighting. It was after we'd gone through the entire "tower" that we discovered it had started working again. So Andy took some photos from the outside.

I don't know what everything is or even what order it's all supposed to be in, so if you'd like to connect the dots, feel free. ;) The gate above is just inside the entrance we went in, which I believe you can see in the second photo below. Don't ask me, I just wandered around with my headset and looked silly. =)

*This actually took place before the photos of the lamps.

London Lamp Posts 07-12-08

These are just some lamp posts we took pictures of because they're kind of neat. Some of them turned out really badly - it was getting dark, and a few were actually under bridges (which IS useful), so use your imagination and fill in the missing details. ;)

Subscribe

Just as a little head's up, I added this blog to FeedBurner, so if anyone wants to change their feed to that one/add this feed to their aggregator or would just like to receive a daily digest of new posts via email, you can click the link to the left, below the Contributors section to get there. Of course, I could also not be so lazy and give you the link, but that wouldn't be any fun. ;)