London, Day 5: Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace

Thursday. Day of the Sun. Everybody in London squinting painfully up at that Unknown Orb in the Sky as we hurried to the subway. Ahhh, underground where it's nice and cold and dark.

Westminster Abbey is down by the river, so we walked alongside Parliament and took some shots of Big Ben. And in the time it took us to point our camera at the clock tower, the dang sun had disappeared again. It was only a cameo appearance after all.

It also became somewhat foggy. Anyways, here's Westminster. It's a ginormous Gothic wedding cake of a building:
Like every other monument we visit, no photos "technically" allowed...and they're a lot more strict about it here than in Paris. So I photographed in the doorway as we stood in line. They'll probably make a rule about that next.

It always helps to have an audio guide in extremely-huge extremely-historical tourist traps; Westminster has a pretty good one that greatly enhanced our experience (especially compared with the prospect of wandering around a cavernous cathedral going "Hey cool!...What the heck is that?")

Obscurely enough, their audio guide is voiced by Jeremy Irons. Hate to say it but the last time I saw him in a movie, I had to watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version to get through it. Yeah that would be Eragon.

Still and all, Jeremy was pleasant enough until the end, when he urged us to go visit the cathedral gift shop and buy his soundtrack on CD. Okay, Jeremy. When St. George freezes over I'll be sure and do that.

Jeremy's soothing bass voice described for us which way to turn and how many steps to take and when to take a breath as well as what we were seeing: the coronation chair, and--uh--pretty much everything else was a tomb; we saw the ironically-combined tombs of Queen Elizabeth & Bloody Mary, followed by Mary, Queen of Scots, and basically any important woman Elizabeth ever executed.

We had a gander at most of the famous kings' tombs and that was a very nice and very ornate experience. Richard III, a lot of Edwards, some Henry fellows thrown in here and there. The royals tend to repeat names quite a lot. Judging by their tomb sculptures, they also repeat noses.

My favorite was probably Poets' Corner. That's where you find, crammed into the floor, more truly imaginative minds than you'll ever meet in your entire...on the other hand, this train of thought is getting depressing.

Anywho: monuments to Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Handel, all three Bronte Sisters, Jane Austen, Percy Bysshe Shelley, T.S. Eliot, George Eliot (or should I say Mary Ann), Thackeray, Longfellow, Henry James, William Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, Geoffrey Chaucer, and of course Lewis Carroll. Phew.

Turns out Lewis Carroll's real name is "Charles Lutwidge Dodgson." I would have changed my name too. And I've actually got a doozy of a name myself, so that's saying something.

Then, as you walk out into the cloister, you find even more plaques running around the walls. I thought we'd just put this one up for Nick (hi, Nick).
I'm not sure it will cheer Nick up very much right now considering the hellish treatment he's getting from that most incompetent of all institutions, the BYU financial center...but think of it this way, Nick: Halley's plaque looks heavy. You just say the word and we'll go rip it off the wall, after which you may feel free to chuck it at any part of the financial center you like. Take a few heads off. They're not using them anyway.

I quite liked the cloister, you can always tell at first sight that they're designed for meditation. This one was beautiful. I probably liked it so much because cameras were actually allowed. That's a Christmas Miracle all by itself.
Ahhhh, look at that grass. Two degrees warmer and I would have gone and frolicked in it, although that's probably not allowed either.

The no-photo policy clamped down as soon as we went back indoors, so I can't show you pictures of the last room where they have monuments to Darwin and Newton and Livingstone (yep, the guy you probably know from "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?") Turns out he was also an avid explorer and anti-slavery spokesman, but of course I have to visit his grave to discover any of this helpful information. Thank heavens for Wikipedia.

Well, Westminster was thoroughly enjoyable and a good time was had by all, including Henry, who snored his head off in the nice warm carrier. We followed up with a quick trip down the block to Buckingham Palace, which you can't really explore because the Queen lives there.

There's never a good time to bring this up, but since we're talking about the Queen's residence I guess it's fair game: every time I think of Queen Elizabeth II, that teeny John Stewart that lives in my head starts doing his little impression of her...y'know, the one where he sticks his pinky out and goes "Ohhh HellOOOooooOoOooo!!" Does anybody else have this problem? The John Stewart living in your head thing or the impression-association, take your pick. They're both issues.

So, here's the Buckingham Palace front gate. You could definitely cut a finger on it.

And, of course, Dustin's favorite: the silly-looking guards. They march like total goons and seem completely unaware that they have small animals sleeping on their heads, and we could have watched them all day long, except that doing so would have involved getting frozen to the spot. I've watched A Christmas Story, I've learned my lesson.Okay! So stay tuned for Stonehenge, which will probably be anticlimactic to experience through a blog page, but was so zen. Meanwhile, I better go squish Henry's fat.