St. Pauls Cathedral
I decided to first walk around the place and take it all in, and to the left of the entrance there is a little court yard called Paternoster Square with a cool monument in the middle of it. I didn’t quite get the name of it but you can see it here. And on the outside of the square there is Temple Bar which is was originally part of the London Wall marking the westernmost point of the City of London.
It was moved back to London and placed in this location in 2004. It is weird that they moved it stone by stone to this location and put it back together and unlike Humpy Dumpy they managed it.So into St Pauls I went and like most great cathedrals it takes your breath away with the paintings on the walls and the sheer size of it. You could spend hours under the dome staring up at the paintings finding new things but I decided this might give me a sore neck and there was more to see.
From there I went down the sides and viewed the main alter which is all gold and glistens like you would expect but pretty impressive none the less.After exploring the main part of the cathedral I headed up the stairs to the Whispering Gallery. I was blown away by this gallery. It is a dome where if you whisper against the wall on one side you can be heard clearly on the other side of the dome 32 metres away. A mother and her three kids were having a lot of fun whispering to each other.
Then it is up more stairs to the top two galleries where you can take photos of the city. It is great being able to see over most of Central London.
Then I went down to the crypt hoping to see the tomb of Christopher Wren but unfortunately there was a wedding in this chapel so I couldn’t see it but did get to see Horatio Nelson’s tomb.
So that was that and I needed to find something else to do that day so as you may have gathered I am rather fond of museums so I headed off to the London Museum.
London Museum
The London Museum is s
urprisingly good, I say that because when you walk up to it, it doesn’t look pretty shoddy but once you are inside it is great. It is laid out in a different way to other museums.The way to do the museum is too start at the beginning and go through each section which represents another part of history. The first section is 450,000 BC – 50 AD. This deals with early humans and animals around London during this time. Then it moves on to Roman times and outside the museum there is still part of the Roman city wall. From Roman times you move on to medieval times and this continues to modern London and present day London. It really is a good museum and is worth a visit if you are in the area and need something to do.
