The Duc Pond

Today Amy’s friend, Amy, and I visited Westminster Abbey. Awesome cathedral. Besides being absolutely gorgeous, it’s also incredibly interesting. Like St. Paul’s Cathedral, they bury a lot of people in the floor. They also, however, have tombs above the floor, and even better, their occupants are far more famous.

For example, I walked over the entombed corpses of Charles Dickens (novelist guy), Charles Darwin (evolution guy), George Frederick Handel (composer guy), Rudyard Kipling (writer guy), and Lawrence Olivier (actor guy). Most of these people were in the semi-famous Poets’ Corner. Isaac Newton’s body is also there, but he’s given a large monument and thus one cannot walk on him. Other above-the-ground tombs include those of kings (going way back to the 1200s!), Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and all kinds of others.

They also have the coronation chair, which has been used in coronations since before 1300. Freakin’ amazing. British monarchs have been coronated in the same wooden chair for 700 years. That kind of scale is hard to fathom when you’re an American.

Westminster Abbey is definitely on my recommendation list. I know it’s one of those mega-touristy places, but it doesn’t matter. You can’t beat the feeling of standing next to Elizabeth I and Isaac Newton, or standing on Charles Darwin (Charles, if you knew what shit was going on in America over evolution you’d just want to be dead again).

Afterwards, we hit a pub for some food (no drinking unfortunately). So far I’ve tasted fish & chips (fried battered fish with French fries), bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes w/ gravy), and a Cornish pasty (filled with ground lamb; they pronounce pasty like “paste”, but according to NPR and Food Network pasty is pronounced like “past”).

Then we hit the British Museum, which is a very well-regarded collection of all kinds of stuff throughout civilization’s development. Very awesome. We spent a few hours in there but just scratched the surface really. Awesome mummies and relics from Egypt, relics from the Parthenon, cool stuff from Roman London, and more, like the Rosetta Stone (yes, THE Rosetta Stone). I recommend seeing the British Museum as I would recommend seeing the Smithsonians if you go to Washington, D.C. Plus, like the Smithsonian museums, the British Museum is free (donations requested, which I was happy to give considering the massive collection). See it!

Amy’s friend left us to go home, while we proceeded back to Westminster to ride on the London Eye, basically a giant Ferris wheel that lets you see the entire city. I had almost the same experience at St. Paul’s Cathedral, so I’m not sure I can wholeheartedly recommend spending the ?12.50 to ride. To be fair, though, this went higher. Pretty neat if you want to do something quickly, perhaps at the end of a long day of site-seeing.

Afterwards, we walked around Westminster, which we had pretty much seen already, but it was nice to take it in at a slower pace. A lot of government buildings are on one street (Whitehall), including the Ministry of Defence. Downing Street is also off of Whitehall (the British Prime Minister lives at 10 Downing Street). We took a right and walked along the Thames (pronounced “tems” if you don’t know) for a bit. Very nice.

Finally (whew!), we went home to our hosts, who ordered Indian food. It’s funny that Jeremy just happened to comment on what he heard about British Indian food, because we heard almost the same thing, except stronger: Indian food in Britain is the best Indian food anywhere, even better than in India. It was pretty good.

We did a whole lot of walking today. Basically almost 10 hours of constant walking. It’s great, though. One interesting thing is that Americans are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Sure New York has lots of tourists, but are they all British? There’s definitely a heavy American slant here. Anyway, now we’re preparing for tomorrow: a trip to Cambridge. I’m hoping I run into Stephen Hawking.