Our last full day in London was absolutely wonderful. We began our day with our first optional excursion of the day which was visiting two cathedrals in London -- St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Instead of following the audio guides at either church, we had a London local guide us around.
I have to admit that I was still a bit groggy from not getting much sleep the night before (remember, we were out and about until after 11pm the previous night), so I don't think I retained a lot of information from the St. Paul's cathedral tour. To be fair though, I really love going on tours of cathedrals in order to see the breathtaking architecture!
One of the facts that I learned about the first cathedral was that between 2002-2008 (roughly), there was a project done on the inside of the cathedral to give it a facelift of sorts. Using liquid latex, they applied the solution to the walls inside the cathedral to whiten/clean the walls up. You can really notice a difference because it was probably the cleaniest/newest-looking cathedral I've visited compared to my previous two trips to Europe (Spain and Ireland, if you're wondering). Saint Paul's Cathedral also had much more natural light as opposed to a multitude of stained glass windows which really made a difference because it wasn't as dimly lit as other cathedrals I've seen.
Westminster Abbey had a lot more meaning to me in more ways than one, so I definitely retained more information from my tour there. This is the church where William and Kate got married!! (I'm looking at you there, mom.) It was stunning to be inside the church where they were married because of course the church was breathtakingly beautiful.
This church was also home to the burial grounds for many important figures throughout history (i.e., Winston Churchill). However, most notable to me was the Poet Corner in the chapel where well-known authors were buried such as Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens. It may sound odd but I found this to be a bit exciting.
Anyways, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside either churches. Although we got lots of pictures of Saint Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey from the inside, it just doesn't show the amazing architecture on the inside. So I bought guide books with pictures that do each church justice and share some history that I learned today.
Tom and I were done with our morning excursion around 12:30pm. We were free to spend the afternoon as we pleased but had to meet up with our tour group again for our evening optional excursion after 5pm. We took the Jubilee Line of the Underground to three consecutive stops. First we stopped at Bond Sreet station to go to a store that my friend Jenny had recommended -- Primark. It's a store that sells men and women's clothing at excellent prices. In fact, I snagged a dress for only 5GBP (British pounds, until I get the symbol later). The only downside to the store was that it was SUPER busy and the line for the dressing rooms were way too long. I'm really hoping that the two dresses that I bought fit nicely (*fingers crossed*).
Then we headed to Baker Street station where the Sherlock Holmes museum is located. There was about a 20-minute wait as the line was fairly long and the tour itself would have taken about 30 minutes. Seeing as it was getting pretty close to 5pm at that point, we opted to skip the tour and browse the gift shop instead.
Afterwards, we headed straight to St. John's Wood station to go to a little well-known street called Abbey Road. For any of you who are fans of The Beatles, we did our best to get pictures of ourselves walking across the crosswalk. We also signed the white wall near the crosswalk which is pretty famous in London as well as it's a place where fans sign their name with or without lyrics.
Once we were finished with all of our personal stops, we headed to meet our tour group at the London Eye! It was truly an amazing experience to ride the London Eye. They first take you inside a nearby building where you're shown a 4-D movie clip (about 5 minutes long) to sort of prepare you for what to expect on the London Eye. Then we headed straight for the London Eye and quickly boarded our pods (our large group was split between two pods). Seeing aerial views of London was absolutely fantastic!! The members of our group are sincerely nice and have been kind enough to take pictures of Tom & myself when we've asked. We even bought a photo print that was taken by the shop while we were aboard the London Eye. It turned out really well thankfully.
We ended our day by going out to our three course pub meal with members of our tour group which was included in the optional excursion of the evening. I'm proud to say that I got to each fish and chips before leaving London! I also tried a dessert called -- ahem -- spotted dick (I swear that's what it's called!). It's a sponge cake with sultanas (raisins) in these creamy, sweet sauce. It was really delicious! If you're wondering, my starter item was light breaded mushrooms with blue cheese dipping sauce. Yum!
So we had a fantastically successful last day in London. Tomorrow we have a long day ahead of us as jump back to be another hour behind the US (for a total of a 6-hour time difference). We'll be leaving our hotel pretty early to take the Eurostar train to Paris, France! Can you believe that the trip will only take a little over two hours to get to France? TWO HOURS! Personally, it's hard to believe since it took us 4 hours just to get to the otherwise of the UK when we travelled to Cardiff. I'm definitely looking forward to the quick trip tomorrow.
Until next time, cheers!
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