London, Day 3: St. Paul's Cathedral and the Apocalyptic Storm of Doom

We knew there would be rain on Tuesday, but we thought that if we stuck to mostly indoor activities like St. Paul's and Tower Bridge, we'd be fine.

St. Paul's is the British doppelganger of Sacre Coeur and, as such, simply lovely. Huge white dome, millions of cramped stone stairs spiraling upwards, everything was very similar. Except I'm fairly sure St. Paul's is at least twice as big. All we know for certain is that it had twice as many stairs, and that you could visit two levels of the dome instead of one. Talk about a butt and thigh workout!

Here's a picture of me, playing teeny-weeny ant-sized human being next to Enormous Enormous Cathedral. Seriously, the thing was at least four or five times taller than what you can see of the columns here. No way are we getting that all in one shot.And we climbed practically the whole thing in a tight, steep, spiraling passageway that was described as bad for claustrophobics. In fact the informational sign advised claustrophobics and people with medical conditions not to attempt the climb, since it goes only one way and there isn't even room to turn around. For me and Dustin, there wasn't enough room to stand up straight. My goodness people used to be short!

Although I have an inkling that even for them, this passageway would have been cozy. Good thing I'm severely claustrophobic and only half-seriously convinced myself I could do it. Hey, I totally can. I just can't think or breathe too effectively while doing it, but I can do it.

Thankfully St. Paul's various views were worth the intermittent dizzy spells. Just above the cavernous main floor (and by "just above" I mean a couple hundred feet) is the Whispering Gallery, a huge circular walkway ringed with lights. Also thankfully ringed with a nice tall safety fence, since that's a looooooooong way down. Supposedly if you whisper something against one wall of the gallery, it can be heard at the opposite wall. I saw people testing this out but I don't imagine they got very good results, considering that the place was crammed full of visitors and background noise. Dustin was disappointed because he wanted so very badly to test the acoustic claims of the Whispering Gallery...but it's okay, he can just whisper in my ear instead :)

Like Sacre Coeur (and actually a lot of monuments in London it seems) St. Paul's has a strictly no-photography policy. Since I'm trying to work my way out of Sneaky Picture Taking Hell (read: aggressive cathedral workers everywhere) I wasn't able to get a shot. So, here's a stock photo to show you what the first gallery looks like. I guess I'm not quite ready to be the female version of James Bond after all if I can't even sneak a picture. I know you all thought that besides this one thing I was totally ready for the job...sorry to disappoint.


So we took a nice rest in the Whispering Gallery, played with Henry a little bit, and decided to venture up to the next level like the crazy kids we are.

The passageway got even smaller. I was huffing and puffing as we marched up the steps, but actually feeling pretty good; I think our lifestyle includes enough walking and cardio activity that I do relatively okay at things like this. Of course I had to be careful not to look at the walls or ceiling and did my best to pretend that I was in the middle of an open green field that just happened to be abominably steep. And that was how we all made it safe and sound to the Stone Gallery.

The lovely Stone Gallery is outdoors.

We'd had a little wind and a light sprinkling of rain on the way over to St. Paul's that morning, but nothing too bad. When we entered the Stone Gallery, a balcony that runs around the outside of the cathedral dome, we were immediately hit by a wall of cold air and water that took our breath away. After the first few gasps Henry decided it was pretty cool. He was smiling despite his teeth chattering. Mommy and Daddy weren't quite as enthused, but we buttoned up tighter and held on for dear life.

On a happier note, I really like this picture of Henry and his daddy:
After the Stone Gallery comes the Golden Gallery. But in between we have more stairs--and oh my goodness, I have never seen anything like this. I'm glad I made it through alive.

A couple hundred feet of super-tiny spiral staircase going right up the middle of a huge, empty dome. Empty except for industrial beams and chainlink fence here and there. And did I mention the staircase is made of wrought iron? So, it's see-through. You can see through the step below you. And in between every step is a nice huge gap. Also, the staircase goes up at what surely wasn't, but definitely felt like, a 90 degree angle. I clutched Henry for dear life and stopped every five seconds to swallow and NOT look around. To give you some idea of the freaky amount of empty space we were hanging over--according to Wikipedia, this inner dome measures 173 feet tall.

Vertigoooooooo...

Anywho, we make it to the Golden Gallery, basically a teenier and crampier version of the Stone Gallery except WAY higher up. Cool view. We took a couple shots and then hurried back down to avoid being blown off the roof of St. Paul's, because although we had an umbrella, neither one of us is Mary Poppins.

Here's Henry and I freezing it out on the Golden Gallery. You may notice by my hair that I'm wetter than a drowned rat:
Unfortunately, we were about to get wetter. As we left St. Paul's it started raining in earnest, so that by the time we made it over to Tower Bridge we were soaked to the skin and Henry was starting to make angry speeches at the sky. That's when you know you're in trouble.

You also know you're in trouble if you bend completely over to unfold your umbrella and the wind knocks you back into standing position. Then, it takes your solidly-built wooden-ribbed umbrella and reduces it to a nasty mangled mess. Blown inside out at least twice, bent parts everywhere, it was like watching a casualty of war take place. Oh well, at least I was luckier than the guy next to us, whose umbrella handle snapped clean in half while the upper part blew into the street and got run over by cars. Yikes! Rest in peace, umbrellas.

Dang, I really liked that umbrella too. Booooo.

After our third lap of the tower with no entrance door in sight, we decided to call it a day. Note to self: next time we're caught in a rainstorm in London, we should avoid the Thames River. Tower Bridge spans a nice chunk of the Thames and it probably didn't help much that we were right over all that water and wind.

So, that was how we ended up back at our hotel room by 3:3o in the afternoon. But you know something? We probably had little more than an hour of daylight left anyways, so I was fine with calling it quits.

The sushi helped. We found awesome sushi at a grocery store down the street, loaded up, and lazed around in our hotel room all evening. Bliss, bliss, bliss. London has got some good sushi going on.

Except for staircase design issues, they also don't do a bad job on their cathedrals either. Yay for St. Paul's!