Second and Third Day in London!

So after my relatively sleep deprived night in England and my early breakfast our whole group headed over to St. Paul's Cathedral where we were going to attend church. It was beautiful! I can't give you any images from the inside of the church, because no photography was allowed, but here's an image of the outside.

 The service was beautiful. There was a boy's choir and a men's choir that sang together, and it was so gorgeous. Breathtakingly so. The sermon was given by the Bishop of London, and we also received communion from him. After this we had lunch in a different part of the church Dr. Ryken referred to as "the crypt." We had tea despite the fact it was a little early by British standards.

Next on the itinerary was a literary walk. We saw a plaque commemorating William Wallace, A few John Wesley memorials, and ambled through several parks before ended up at the London Museum.  This went through the history of London if you could not guess that from the name. I found the most interesting part of this exhibit was the section on the London fire. It was a fire that burned for five days that was only stopped when they started blowing up houses to keep it from spreading farther. It was so intense that the stone St. Paul's Cathedral (yes, the one mentioned previously) was destroyed. After my time in the museum, I headed back to our hotel on the Underground and stopped at a nearby grocery store for foodstuffs.

After I ate an entire box of British strawberries by myself and had prepared myself a nutella sandwich, I met up with my friend Katie and a new acquaintance of the trip named Joanne met up for the relatively long underground trip to Westminster and the London Eye. Despite the fact it had rained in the morning, the sun had come out in the afternoon and it was the perfect evening to go up in the Eye.

Near the Eye was the Palace of Westminster and Big Ben of course.

After that we once again made our way back to the hotel, this time for good (or so I thought.) We probably passed three pubs on our way from the underground station to the hotel (three that I noticed) and every one was full of people! Turns out there was a football game between England and Italy that night. Katie got really excited and asked if I would head back to the closet pub and watch the end with her. Since both of my roommates were asleep even though it was only 9:45, I agreed and we headed out. This was one of the most entertaining events to watch I have seen since I have arrived. Oh, not the game. The English WATCHING the game. There was singing, shouting, smoking, and drinking. When they got excited and started screaming, people were literally running from all parts of the street to see what had happened. Katie was giving me running commentary, which was also very entertaining. Finally we headed back and I got a good nights sleep, despite the rumble of the underground beneath me, and the continued shouting from outside.

This morning I again headed to breakfast, my roommates STILL asleep. I had more tea, which was lovely, then headed back to my room to continue the long process of editing a lot of pictures. Then we headed to the British Museum. The coolest thing here was the Rosetta Stone. I had heard about this for years, but had never expected to see it in person. We also looked at a lot of relics from Medieval Europe. There were also a couple of medals that match the design of the ones that are going to be used in this years Olympics.

After lunch we divided into two groups. I choose the group heading to Kensington Park as I wanted to be able to walk around and take more pictures of the outdoors. It was full of people! There were woman jogging with strollers, people on bikes, and lots and lots of dogs! They were everywhere! Many of them not on leashes. It made me so happy. At one point a huge dog came careening through our group to my delight and many others alarm.

Now once again I am back in my hotel room. I've taken the time in up til now to work on editing a lot more photos and craft this blog post. I'm caught up on this trip! Tonight we are heading to Regent's Park again to see Midsummer's Night's Dream in the open air theater. I'm really excited! Check out my facebook page for lots of my pictures.