Loving Long Weekends in London (Day 2)

Our second day in London started rather early in order to catch the 9:30 opening of Westminster Abbey. Falling asleep before any of our other "hostel roommates" had arrived, I was surprised to wake up to five other people in my room. Mainly, the surprising part was that I never even heard the other five people check into the hostel and climb into their beds. (Thank goodness that I'm a heavy sleeper!) At breakfast, I had my first experience with "crumpets", which are mainly just thick biscuits made from a slightly sweeter dough. Grabbing a quick breakfast, Bill and I were off again for our second day of sightseeing.

Leaving our hostel around 8 o'clock, we decided to take a detour to Trafalgar Square for a few fun photos. For those of you back home in America, Trafalgar Square is the area of London where tourists would often buy birdseed from street vendors and feed the pigeons until the mayor passed a law that made pigeon-feeding a criminal offense in the famous square. It may seem that I am a bird-hater, but I'm siding with the mayor on this one -- the statues and fountains in Trafalgar Square are too beautiful to be covered in bird droppings. At the front of Trafalgar square is a very tall tower-like statue that has four very large lion sculptures placed on each of the four corners of its square base. These lions are the most photographed statues in London -- mainly because they are incredibly adorable and tourists are allowed to climb onto these massive beasts for some pretty spectacular photos. Ironically, the sculptor had never seen a lion when he fashioned the gigantic monument. Relying on likenesses and paintings of lions, the sculptor used a dog and a cat as his live models for the sculptures. This is probably why the lions have a notable endearing effect rather than the look of majesty originally intended. Not wanting to miss our chance for fun pictures with the lions, Bill and I took turns climbing onto the statues for a few crazy photo ops. The pictures are some of my favorites!

Leaving Trafalgar Square, we walked back to the nearest Tube station and took the subway to Westminster Abbey. There are not enough words to describe the awesomeness of Westminster Abbey. Serving as the center of the Anglican Church, Westminster Abbey is the most beautiful building that I have ever seen. (Yes, it tops Buckingham Palace ten to one!) The entire church is adorned in gold and the ceilings are entwined with the most elaborate sculpting that I have ever encountered. One of the chapel ceilings is even considered to be one of the great wonders of the world, which was not surprising after seeing the great detail of the moulded scroll work. The authentic stained glass windows are incredibly detailed with colorful designs and biblical pictures. They are so big that very little artificial lighting is needed on a sunny day. Even though tourists are not allowed to take pictures in the abbey, I truly believe that no picture could possibly capture the beauty of this massive cathedral. As we walked from chapel to chapel, I felt a quiet presence of the many British kings and queen buried underneath the abbey's floors. The most notable royal tombs include Queen Elizabeth I, Princess Diana, Queen Victoria, Mary Queen of Scots, King Henry VIII, and King Richard III. My favorite part of the abbey was entitled "Poet's Corner". This area of the chapel attributes its name to all of the great authors, composers, and intellectual contributors that are either buried or memorialized in this area of the abbey. Some of these famous names include Chaucer, Handel, Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, the three Bronte sisters, Lord Byron, and Jane Austen to name a few. I was taken aback by the surprise that so many famous people have been entombed within the Abbey's vaults.

The only tragedy of my trip to Westminster Abbey involves $6 worth of beautiful postcards bought from the abbey's gift shop to take the place of all the wonderful pictures I wanted to take while touring the abbey's chapels but could not because photography was forbidden. Planning to use these postcards in a later scrapbook of my European travels, I accidentally left my bag of postcards in a Chinese restaurant where Bill and I stopped for lunch. Though disappointed at first, I consoled myself with the thought that I will be returning to Westminster again with Craig (my awesome boyfriend) in November. Next time I'll keep an eye on my postcards!

Finishing up our tour of the abbey, Bill and I tried once again in vain to grab tickets for a 2 o'clock matinee of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice". Unfortunately, even the matinee was sold out for weeks in advance. Not letting our spirits get too low, we decided to move on to Plan B and find tickets for a play at one of the theaters on the west side of London. Luckily, we managed to locate a discount ticket office next to the Tube station only a block away from Westminster Abbey. Much to our surprise, they were selling £35 tickets for the 2:30 matinee of Wicked! Needless to say, I was incredibly excited, and we decided to jump on the chance to see the play that sells out on Broadway nearly every night. (For those of you who are theater junkies, plays in London are considered to be second to only Broadway in New York City.) Grabbing a quick lunch at a Chinese restaurant and frantically changing into nicer theater-worthy clothes at our hostel, Bill and I managed to pick up our tickets and arrive at the theater well before the curtain call. At a first glance, I was surprised by the Victoria Apollo Theater. Expecting the audience to be dressed in their finest like at theaters in New York, it was surprising to see a majority of people in jeans and t-shirts. Even though matinees are generally more casual, I felt slightly overdressed in my grey slacks and button-down satin shirt. Despite the casual audience, Wicked was far from mediocre. The author, Gregory Maguire, wove an incredibly clever plot of the "true story" behind the Wizard of Oz. His version of the classic children's tale answers several questions such as, "Why is the wicked witch green?" and "Why can the scarecrow, tin man, and cowardly lion talk?" The music was also phenomenal, and if I'm not careful, I'll ruin the play for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Undoubtedly, my recommendation for Wicked is two thumbs up and a must-see for anyone for loves theater and fairy tales!

Since the play was rather long (nearly three hours), evening was already falling upon the city as we left the theater. Answering to a pair of rumbling stomachs, Bill and I wandered back to the nearest Tube station and took the subway to Hyde Park Station, which is only a few blocks away from the very first Hard Rock Cafe. Believe it or not, Hard Rock Cafe originated in London when the two American owners traveled to England and were disappointed that they couldn't find a decent hamburger or American-portioned meals. Thus began one of the largest American restaurant chains in the world. Upon arriving at the restaurant, I wasn't surprised to see that it was packed. Since the wait for a table was only 45 minutes, this gave us the chance to browse through the rock memorabilia on the walls and search for a souvenir t-shirt proudly sporting the "Hard Rock Cafe - London" logo in order to prove that we had eaten at the original Hard Rock Cafe. With t-shirts in tow, we were eventually seated at a small table on the lower level for our first large, American-portioned meal of the weekend. Since this was Bill's first visit to a Hard Rock Cafe, he thought that the loud music and rock mementos were a lot of fun and worth the slightly high dinner prices. As for me, I was thrilled mostly by the chance to bite into a quality American pulled-pork sandwich!

With stomachs full, Bill and I decided to take a short walk around the Hyde Park area of London in order to see a little more of the city at night. In particular, we were looking for "Harrods", a large department store mostly famous for its ties to Princess Diana. The owner of Harrods was the father of Princess Diana's lover, Dodi Al Fayad. After the princess and Mr. Fayad were killed in a fatal car accident, Dodi's father erected a large fountain in his multi-level department store in which Princess Diana and her lover are holding hands and ethereally looking at shoppers as they pass by. Unfortunately, Bill and I only saw the brightly-lit outside of Harrods Department Store since they typically close at 8 p.m. on Saturdays. Regardless, the store looked pretty spectacular even from the outside!

As our eye-lids began to grow heavy, we decided to check in for an early night and eventually found our way back to a clean bed at our hostel. Once again, I wiped out as soon as I climbed under the covers. Walking around London is incredibly exhausting!