A London Synopsis

It's our last night in London and I have a little time to blog finally, so i'm going to sum up our London experience. We visited most of the highlights, and while the three days have been fantastic, it takes many more days to truly see this city.

Today we took the Westminster Abbey tour (after going to a service there yesterday). I cannot fully describe the enormity of this place. There is so much history contained in the abbey, but I am going to try my best to convey the ornate magnificence.

Kings and Queens that have cumulatively shaped the earth as much as anyone else throughout time have all been buried, married, and coronated at this place. Elizabeth I, Mary Tudor and Queen of Scots, Edward the Confessor, Edward Longshanks (6 foot 2 by the way), Henry III, Henry VII (beautiful Lady Chapel funded by him), and many more are buried there. It is strange to say "many more" when referring to British monarchs throughout time. Every room is opulently decorated to a ludicrous level.

Poets Corner blew my mind. It is tucked away with the greatest writers to have ever existed buried all around us. Spencer, Kipling, Tennyson, Chaucer, and Dickens are ALL buried there. On that note, I am in the middle of a Tale of Two Cities, and I hope to finish it in Paris.... for obvious reasons. Handel is buried there as well, and his music serenades you through the audio tour.

On the way out in the main nave, the greatest British scientists are buried. I got to view Newton, Lyell, and Faraday's final resting place. Most significantly, Charles Darwin is buried there. I stood at the foot of his memorial for several minutes, trying my best to realize the greatness of the scientists all around me. In that 20 foot triangle, four men were buried with a cumulative IQ of 650. To be blunt: Newton invented gravity (we were all floating), Darwin invented biology, Faraday invited time, and Lyell invented rocks. We lived in a floating, timeless, rockless, and transitional form free world before these great men came onto the scene. I'll stop blubbering about them now, but for me, that alone was worth a trip to Europe.

Essentially, without exaggeration, Westminster Abbey may have more incredible people buried in it than any other place on Earth.

So we also saw the National Gallery today, which has paintings from Raphael, Da Vinci, Monet, Manet, Seurat, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. I saw VG's Sunflowers, Rembrandt's self portrait, Da Vinci's Madonna and Child, Monet's Lily paintings, and many others. Obviously all the great paintings were magnificent, and the history behind them was equally interesting. One of the Bellini paintings had an awesome story about Lorenzo de Medici stealing it. I think Lorenzo was able to do whatever he wanted. There were a couple paintings that really struck me. One in particular was called an Allegory for Human Vanity by Steenwyck. I recommend Google imaging it, but the artist did a lovely job of juxtaposing the frailty and transient nature of life with the very things that make life worth living. I really really appreciated it, and went back to look at it several times.

I should mention, I did encounter my first pay to use the bathroom facility, but did not pay. I was really pressed for time because Tom and I were trying to get into Westminster, and I did not have the requisite 50 pence to move the turnstile. So, I just jumped over it. Lets find out if the French have barriers that prevent such a thing. I doubt it. We have met people from all over the world, and our conversations have been very enlightening. I love learning about other cultures, especially about ones that I am entirely ignorant of. We met a pair of Estonian men at dinner, and let me tell you, besides knowing Talinn the capitol city, I know absolutely nothing about that country. It is very humbling to realize how large and complicated the world really is.

Well, I need to go off to bed, Tom and I have a train to Dover really early tomorrow morning. The White Cliffs and Calais await us! I hope you are all doing well, and I assure you I have much more to talk about when I get back.

-Joel