June 30, 2010

St. Paul's Cathedral and London museum

I would like to start off by saying that getting lost seems to be a theme of mine... 


St. Paul's Cathedral was outstanding the building is just breathtaking and it made me wonder why we don't bother to build buildings like this any more... oh wait it is because we aren't as cool as they are.. but oh well.  


since there were no pictures aloud inside the cathedral i will have to write about the inside but i will start by showing you picture of the outside 










   the inside is interesting because half of it is very interesting because the guy who designed it, christopher wren, wanted the cathedral to be rather plain however during the victorian period the people changed half of it and added gorgeous mosaic art on the domed ceilings.  by the time they were done decorating half of the cathedral they ran out of money so the other half of the ceilings are beautiful but they are a different kind of beautiful, they are not as gaudy and busy as the "victorian" half.  It is great because you get the "best of both worlds" for lack of a better miley cyrus phrase.


there is one part that our tour guide let us take photos of her it is...






These stairs have been in many different movies including harry potter, and sherlock holmes.  the art that is hanging was really cool because it is wires sticking out of a core that looks like a falling person... it is hard to describe but it was really awesome to see a mix of modern art in an old building 


501 stairs later we reached the top 


i know it was 500 stairs later because i counted every single one!  




a view down a hole from way up high... the tile of the main floor of the cathedral 

view from the top 









this is a small glance at the 500 stairs we climbed !

side story: i decided to go down and explore the cathedral 
a little bit more, before everyone was finished 
so we were supposed to meet at a certain place at a 
certain time if you were to ask me where and when 
i honestly couldn't tell you because i was too busy 
admiring the beauty all around me when those instructions
were being given so i figured that i would sit at the exit of the stairs and wait
for people to come down and then i would just go with them
so i am sitting and once again admiring all the amazing things
inside of the cathedral well thirty minutes passed and 
i had not seen any one so i began to wonder because 
as far as i could remember i seemed to get the sense that we were already
behind and so i didn't understand why no one was coming down from the 
tower so i walked out front and ate my sandwich waiting for a familiar 
face... well that never happened i waited and waited and 
i finally just decided to walk to the next place that we were going as a group 
A.K.A. the london museum i eagerly pulled out my map so that i 
could find the museum quickly however as i pulled out my map i realized
that because london has NO rubbish bins anywhere i had put my gum 
in the little printed off map that the professors had given me 
and it was covering the EXACT spot that i needed to see
it really seems dumb of me to put my gum in the map that i would need to 
use however there is an explanation for my decision and it goes like 
this, i NEVER expected to get lost in a group of 50 people 
and i never expected that i would have to find the museum by myself
and i never anticipated that i would need the map... so i put my 
chewing gum in it... as it turns out that wasn't such a good 
decision because I GOT LOST AGAIN 

after i had been walking for a while with no sign of the museum i turned around
and headed back toward the cathedral to go explore the opposite
direction, luckily i ran into the other "lost" byu student and 
ironically we are the only two freshmen on the program. 
We had a jolly time being lost trying to look around the corners on 
roundabouts to make sure there wasn't a speeding car coming.

Lesson learned: no matter how far you walk around a roundabout 
you will never be able to see around its corner ... basically you just 
have to pray that one of those crazy speedy london 
drivers isn't flying around the roundabout corner and run for it

p.s. I was later informed that roundabouts do not have corners 

through it all we finally made it after asking two different people for 
directions, and yes it was like one block away from st. paul's cathedral


This is us trying to take a picture of with the sign behind us 
we took several and this is the best we could do. 

I am sorry i cannot refrain i have to tell one more side story about this adventure
the reason taylor was lost: although this is not technically 
my story to tell i like it so i am going to tell it any way 
i am walking toward st. pauls and i see taylor hobbling toward me and at first i did not notice 
anything unusual but it was soon brought to my attention that taylor 
was indeed missing a shoe so here is her story of her missing shoe

R.I.P. taylor's rainbow flip flop 

Flipy flop quietly fell to her death one day as she was assisting her 
owner down the many winding steps of St. Paul's Cathedral
sadly attacked by a comrade's faulty step, she 
was violently striped from the foot of her owner and fell swiftly 
to her death although there were many efforts and even some 
attempted fence climbing to retrieve her this rescue mission was 
sadly, Unsuccessful, all the professors, and other students left behind
flippy's mourning owner separating her from the rest of the group 
therefore also making her lost.  although flippy died a sad death 
she is in a better place now resting quietly on the roof of St. Paul's Cathedral
a quiet monument, silently expressing the painful life of a fallen shoe

there it is the sad tale of how taylor lost her shoe 
the best part is that the rest of the day she was walking around
london shoeless and everyone was giving her strange looks 

i got a good laugh out of this!

ok well now back to the museum... WE MADE IT and here is the ta da photo


P.S. it says "YOU ARE HERE"  WE MADE IT

The london museum was really interesting because it showed all of the different lifestyles, events, and time periods of london. 


my personal favorite part was the extremely depressing and graphic movie on the Black Plague

but the skeleton bones were cool too  

London museum was pretty sweet i would go back to it again 

XoOxXXoXOX






3 comments:

  1. Very funny. I am glad you made it.

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  2. The reason that we don't build things like this any more is that we have television to keep us occupied. What else was there to do back then? No television so lets build a cool building! Can we send flowers for Flippy or make a donation in her honor? We could start a memorial fund and try to replace her. Wecould have a rallying cry like "For Flippy and for London!" or "remember Flippy lost at such a young age!" Getting lost is a good way to explore London. Maybe we could start a tour and tell people to just get lost in London and things will wrok out. No two trips will be the same but it will be exciting to find out what you eventually see. remember that getting lost is always fun as long as there is also a getting found!

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  3. Hahahaha! Poor rainbow flip flops, that really is a shame

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