{"id":145,"date":"2012-06-22T02:33:26","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T07:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/?p=145"},"modified":"2012-07-09T09:19:51","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T14:19:51","slug":"the-london-museum-st-pauls-cathedral-and-phantom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/?p=145","title":{"rendered":"The London Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral and PHANTOM!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, June 20th<\/sup><\/p>\n

Today was awesome!\u00a0 We headed first thing for Leicester Square, so we could get our tickets for Phantom of the Opera (yay!).\u00a0 Then we went to the Museum of London.\u00a0\u00a0 We really only wanted to go to the Museum of London because they have one of Kevin\u2019s favorite pieces of clothing \u2013 a leather jerkin from the 1600\u2019s.\u00a0 But, when we got in there, it turned out to be a really cool museum.\u00a0 It was arranged chronologically, so we started out with some of the very first settlers to the area\u00a0 Turns out, this particular bend in the river has been popular a long time, and they have found everything from hand axes through Bronze Age swords and Iron Age offerings.\u00a0 Incidentally, Bronze Age stuff is a lot better made than I though it would be.\u00a0 Partly, I think, because it holds up better over time, so it still looks all shiny and new and sharp, but their work was pretty impressive.\u00a0 They\u2019ve also found evidence of what would be the first ever London bridge, which was a length of pilings hammered into the riverbank, with a deck sort of lashed on. \u00a0Cool stuff.<\/p>\n

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Iron age swords and shields! The cool part is, all of this stuff is from London, so you’re really getting a window into one place, at that particular time.<\/p><\/div>\n

From there, we went through the Roman period, where London (Londinium) got its name, and a lot of the infrastructure.\u00a0 See, even though the Romans had basically gone when the medieval people got here,\u00a0 a lot of their buildings and foundations and roads and so on remained, and the medieval people just went and built on top of a lot of it.\u00a0 Some of the artifacts that they have found from these early time periods are really impressive, in that they have survived this long.\u00a0 For example, they had this hairnet, essentially, from the medieval period, and it was almost totally intact.\u00a0 Apparently, the London clay is really good for preserving things, because it doesn\u2019t allow much oxygen in.\u00a0 Anyway, we found Kevin\u2019s favorite jerkin, which is a really well preserved article of clothing.\u00a0 It\u2019s punched all over with little tiny stars and hearts, and in general looks pretty cool.\u00a0\u00a0 They even had a reproduction of it out that you could put on and touch and things like that.<\/p>\n

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The leather jerkin!<\/p><\/div>\n

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And the version to try on. It fit Kevin surprisingly well<\/p><\/div>\n

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16th century eating and cooking stuff<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dressy!<\/p><\/div>\n

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I like this jug. That is all.<\/p><\/div>\n

We continued through the time periods, ending up in Modern London, and then out the doors into actual modern London.\u00a0 The museum is pretty close to St. Paul\u2019s cathedral, so we headed there next.\u00a0 St. Paul\u2019s was built, or rather, rebuilt, after the great fire of 1666.\u00a0 Christopher Wren was the architect in charge of its design and building, as well as that of some 50 odd other churches in the area.\u00a0 Some of the things he did were pretty cool.\u00a0 For example, he wanted an impressively tall dome on St. Paul\u2019s, that could be seen from many different places, but he wanted the inside to look well balanced.\u00a0 So there are actually two domes on St. Paul\u2019s \u2013 a tall one on the outside, and a shorter one inside, and this weird cone thing in between holding them both up.\u00a0 If someone didn\u2019t tell you about it, you would never know.<\/p>\n

In St. Paul\u2019s, they let you go into a lot of places, if you are willing to climb stairs.\u00a0 So we started out on the floor of the cathedral, wandered around there for a bit.\u00a0 This audio guide was via iPod, which was cool, but it definitely wasn\u2019t the best audio guide ever.\u00a0 They seem to have gotten the idea that since they had lots of space, they should fill it!\u00a0 The commentaries were a bit\u2026 long.\u00a0 Anyway, we wandered around, saw where shrapnel in WWII had punched a hole in the wall, saw the truly awesome mosaics on the ceilings, and then headed up into the dome.\u00a0 The first level, right inside the dome, is called the Whispering Gallery, because you can whisper and someone on the other side can hear it, because of the shape.<\/p>\n

Then, we decided to head up one more level, to the outside of the outer dome.\u00a0 This was achieved by yet more (increasingly narrow, stone spiral) stairs.\u00a0 There is a balcony all around the outside, and you can get a really good view of the city.\u00a0 But!\u00a0 There was still one more level up.\u00a0 This time, we were climbing a metal staircase, in that space between the upper and lower domes.\u00a0 There were a couple places where the ceiling was so low, they had put plastic things to prevent you from braining yourself.\u00a0 About halfway up, there was a tiny, foot square little window, that looked down into the cathedral.\u00a0 Definitely vertigo inducing, if you didn\u2019t have it already from all the spirals.\u00a0 Finally, we were on the balcony surrounding the spire of the cathedral, on top of the dome.\u00a0 The views were TOTALLY worth the climb, and it was cool to see all the different landmarks and things in all directions.\u00a0 All told, I\u2019m pretty sure it was in the neighborhood of 530 stairs.<\/p>\n

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Hello, London!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Looking down from the second level<\/p><\/div>\n

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Us on the tippy top!<\/p><\/div>\n

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The view across the Thames. That’s the Millennium Bridge, and the Globe is right across the river and to the left a bit.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n

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Downtown London, the Financial District<\/p><\/div>\n

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The rest of St. Paul’s itself.<\/p><\/div>\n

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So, most of the way up to the top of the dome, there was a tiny window in the floor. In the reflection of the glass you can see the spiral staircases we have yet to climb, and in the very middle – that’s the floor of St. Paul’s. Waaay down there.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Tiny stairs! Tiny!<\/p><\/div>\n

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And spirally. Was definitely getting dizzy on the downward journey<\/p><\/div>\n

When we made it all the way back down, we decided to keep going down into the crypt.\u00a0 The crypt is interesting because it is where all of the people are buried, unlike at Westminster where you can\u2019t move for standing on someone\u2019s memorial.\u00a0 So Wren himself is down there, and Wellington, and Nelson and so one.\u00a0 They are so comparatively modern to the ones in the other churches and things, it was weird.\u00a0 Nevertheless, definitely a beautiful place to visit.<\/p>\n

After St. Paul\u2019s, we headed back to our little apartment, to have dinner and get ready to see Phantom!\u00a0 The show is playing at Her Majesty\u2019s Theatre, which is old enough to have been His Majesty\u2019s Theatre, and Phantom is currently in its 25th<\/sup> year playing at this theatre.\u00a0 We kind of thought that on a Wednesday night it wouldn\u2019t be too crowded, but the theatre was TOTALLY full.\u00a0 The theatre is the sort of very tall, rather shallow kind, where all of the seats are in balconies of one sort or another, practically hanging over the stage.\u00a0 I think we were in the third of five levels.<\/p>\n

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Her Majesty’s Theatre<\/p><\/div>\n

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Yay for Phantom!<\/p><\/div>\n

It was a very fun show.\u00a0 Kevin had never seen it before, outside of the terrible movie that came out a few years ago.\u00a0 Christine and the Phantom were very good, and the staging was excellent.\u00a0 Kevin tried to buy some candy at the interval, and came back with JellyBabies, which are these extremely strange candies.\u00a0 They are rather waxy on the outside, and then like soft gumdrops in the middle.\u00a0 When it\u00a0 was over and we left, we both had songs stuck in our heads for the rest of the night.\u00a0 So fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, June 20th Today was awesome!\u00a0 We headed first thing for Leicester Square, so we could get our tickets for Phantom of the Opera (yay!).\u00a0 Then we went to the Museum of London.\u00a0\u00a0 We really only wanted to go to the Museum of London because they have one of Kevin\u2019s favorite pieces of clothing \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}