LP Day 3 – Crowds, Tourists, Churches and a Battleship
Monday morning and I wanted to get a good head start on the day. For the past week, I’ve habitually been out the door around ten am. Today, I was up and moving at a healthy nine thirty. We had another full docket today, and I wanted to hit the ground running. First, Westminster.
The church was teeming with students. Tourist students, the worst kind. I’ve been a tourist student many times and there seems to be a behavioral code. First, you must assume zero responsibility for your body and bags, always look up, walk sideways and in groups of five or more, laugh loudly in cavernous marble spaces, give no one the right of way, never have exact change (or any change for that matter), and demand to be in every picture.
Westminster, church of ancient rites and modern weddings, gravesite of saints and poets and half a millennium of nobility.
St. Paul’s Cathdral. Beautiful and enormous, final home to Lord Nelson and John Donne, Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington. Finely constructed whisper dome, where I heard Joren’s voice from inside the walls, and took a forbidden video of a Vienna’s youth choir who had come to practice for the evenings recital. Workplace to one of London’s most engaging dome operators, Peter, who took about five thousand photos of Jor and I.
HMS Belfast. Launched in March 1938 and entered reserve in 1963. A key branch of the Imperial War Museum and a lovely spot to troll through wartime history. Also, a lovely deck to watch the funny tourist boats drive by.
By the way, that is a tugboat pulling a tourist boat up the Thames. Everyone was leaning against the railing, staring, not talking. I'd like to think that the tugboat pull was just part of the package, but it really looked like they'd been stuck on a broken boat for hours, and finally a tuggy had to bring them in.
The church was teeming with students. Tourist students, the worst kind. I’ve been a tourist student many times and there seems to be a behavioral code. First, you must assume zero responsibility for your body and bags, always look up, walk sideways and in groups of five or more, laugh loudly in cavernous marble spaces, give no one the right of way, never have exact change (or any change for that matter), and demand to be in every picture.
Westminster, church of ancient rites and modern weddings, gravesite of saints and poets and half a millennium of nobility.
St. Paul’s Cathdral. Beautiful and enormous, final home to Lord Nelson and John Donne, Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington. Finely constructed whisper dome, where I heard Joren’s voice from inside the walls, and took a forbidden video of a Vienna’s youth choir who had come to practice for the evenings recital. Workplace to one of London’s most engaging dome operators, Peter, who took about five thousand photos of Jor and I.
HMS Belfast. Launched in March 1938 and entered reserve in 1963. A key branch of the Imperial War Museum and a lovely spot to troll through wartime history. Also, a lovely deck to watch the funny tourist boats drive by.
By the way, that is a tugboat pulling a tourist boat up the Thames. Everyone was leaning against the railing, staring, not talking. I'd like to think that the tugboat pull was just part of the package, but it really looked like they'd been stuck on a broken boat for hours, and finally a tuggy had to bring them in.
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