No, really, I can prove it. Look.
This is St. Paul's Cathedral, seen from the front, on a perfectly sunny day [complete with fluffy white clouds]. It was actually a very nice day in London, and although it was a bit chilly, you can see that everybody was out at lunchtime to enjoy the sun.
I think I liked London more than any other large city I've ever been in. It reeks of tradition and past, of war, poets, and queens. How do you describe a place where monarchy, the industrial revolution, globalism, businessmen in suits, tea with sandwiches, and the dignity of the Church are so very much concurrently visible? We walked down streets that were almost entirely government buildings, streets that were almost entirely theatre after theatre, and a street [my favorite], that was almost completely composed of bookstores.
Businessmen wear suits in London--not just older men, but men my age, all in suits. People eat outside. There is still a high society, and a magazine to follow and photograph it. There's a Starbucks on every streetcorner but tea, fish and chips, and roast is served everywhere else. The subway is referred to as the "Tube" and looks to be about 200 years old. London rivals New York City for diversity in population.
I know I'm rambling, but it's so difficult to describe such a large, diverse, vibrant city. I did love it, and I would love to live there, but perhaps not forever. In some other life, I would've taken another year to graduate and perhaps spent a semester studying at Cambridge or Oxford, right at the homes of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien; I could've visited the haunts of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, seen Shakespeare's home and the Brontes' cottage in the moors. Someday, I will go back and see it all. When I actually have the money to afford it, that is.
We saw Buckingham Palace, which looked disappointingly unlike a palace and left us wishing we had time to visit Windsor Castle. We saw Westminster Abbey and thought of the many kings and queens--and other notables--who had been christened, wed, crowned, and buried there. We saw the Parliament buildings, the incomparable Big Ben, the original home of Scotland Yard, the Churchill War Rooms Museum--the very rooms where Churchill lived and met with his staff during the war--Trafalgar Square, and St. James' Park (which was heartbreakingly green and beautiful). We saw the British Library.
Let's pause a moment to think about how amazing the British Library is.
I cannot even describe the heaven that is the British Library. I could write odes. They have the COOLEST things--let me digress into teenage silliness a bit--they have Mozart's marriage certificate. Letters of Jane Austen's. TWO copies of the Magna Carta. Scribblings from the Beatles of original lyrics. Two of the oldest copies of the Bible ever discovered. And that doesn't even cover it.
We stopped in Starbucks a couple hundred times, since we walked all of this. In a day. Then we went, the next day, to the Tower of London, Covent Gardents (complete with minstrels and jugglers), St. Paul's Cathedral, and the British Museum, where we saw the Rosetta Stone and mummies. And other stuff, but the mummies--let's face it--are the coolest part.
And in all this, I think many of my favorite things are the smallest. Seeing Drury Lane. Fish & chips at a pub. Walking by the Thames. Just listening to the accents of the people. &etc.
Samuel Johnson once said the following, and then I will leave you with a few pictures of our days: "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." I don't know how true this is, but it is certainly a fascinating city.
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