London is Calling...
Craig and I took the train to London for a four day holiday. The train was an easy five hour ride from Edinburgh, and I highly recommend the hotel we stayed in, The Sanctuary House Hotel. The city is amazing. Craig kept saying it was adult Disney-land. It was kinda sparkly.
It seemed to me, however, under it's shinning exterior, there was a deeper, darker interior that goes hundreds of years back. Throughout the city we see two sides of the same coin. Maybe it's a city who has found redemption. Bear with me on this theme...Idk.
We visited Westminster Abbey.
It's huge and beautiful. It's a working, functioning church. There are noisy crowds of people here (I'll come back to this). A pastor (woman) stops everyone for prayer on the hour. There are daily services and Evensong. A Choir (Quire) practices and performs weekly. Women have been allowed to join in the past few years. The last person to be buried at Westminster Abbey is Dr. Stephen Hawkins, renowned physicist, and an atheist. Charles Darwin is buried there; he once described himself as an agnostic. Sir Isaac Newton... Oscar Wilde is celebrated there with a memorial window in Poet's Corner. This is the same country that imprisoned him for two years hard labor for being gay. Is this memorial an acknowledgment of wrong doing on England's part? An apology? Idk.
There is more about Westminster Abbey that is perplexing. Given my Irish heritage, I am really confused by the sixteen, ten-foot crystal chandeliers that were given to the Abbey as a gift from the Guinness family of the Republic of Ireland. I believe everyone is aware of the contentious, often violent and horrific history between those two countries. If not, I recommend Trinity by Leon Uris.
We are grateful for our tour by a church verger. She is very knowledgeable with a quirky sense of humor, but, also assertive as she pushes us through the crowds and intimidates those not in our group out of areas she wants to show us. Like I said, the Abbey was very crowded. And noisy. And then it dawns on me, what the most disturbing thing is that I could not earlier put my finger on. I've been in several other cathedrals. Notre Dame in Paris, St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Craig's home cathedral in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (wow!), and many others even the small ones that are so poignant. I guess it's a thing with me, visiting churches and cathedrals; the awe, the majestic-ness...the peace. That was it! I did not get the sense of hush and quiet and reverence and deep peace that goes with entering a church, especially one of this magnitude.
And...continuing my perplexation....
Besides services, and a place for burial of Kings, Queens and England's most famous, Westminster Abbey also is the place for weddings (Kate and William in 2011) and coronations, most recently King Charles the III. Pomp and circumstance to the nines, right? Take a look at the King's chair that he is crowned in:
Rather rough looking, wouldn't you say? And, yes, that is 700 year old graffiti you see etched into the wood. Don't ya think they could've sand it down a little bit? As an aside, the Antique Road Show always used to bother me, as they would put a thousand dollar value on a piece of paint-pealing-unfinished furniture, because it was in original condition, but if you sanded it down and refinished a piece and made it look like something you'd actually like to have in your home, it became practically worthless...don't even get me started.
Time to move on, I'm becoming a little negative 😉 .
Buckingham Palace
I'm embarrassed to say how much we paid for tickets for a tour of the inside of Buckingham Palace. And, don't even get me started on whichever of Camilla's outfits we were funding. But, it is amazingly beautiful! We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside, but, wow, room after room of Victorian splendor.
These I got off the internet (so there!), and yeah, that's what it really looks like...and then some!
So, (yes, here it is, you know it was coming...) here's the bizarre thing. I told you there are two sides to this coin. This splendid, 775 room palace (I can't even imagine keeping it all clean) is not lived in by anyone. Yup, that's right, since Queen Elizabeth the 2nd passed away, no one is living there. Charles and Camilla continue to live in their "apartments" in Clarence House, about half a mile away from the palace. Our tour guide tells us it is because Charles is more comfortable there. There are also only about two state dinners held at the palace a year, as it takes approximately six months to plan and prepare them. As Paul Hollywood famously says on The Great British Baking Show, "It's a shame, really."
But I'll let you draw your own conclusions; or not...
We continued to be awed and thrilled by what else came our way in London:
And, finally, of the list of bizarre things (remember I told you it was a city of two sides):
The Tower of London, where imprisonments, drawings and quarterings, hanging and other forms of torture were a common occurrence, the moat is now a wild-flower park where children run thru the paths, couples stroll hand in hand, and nice people, like you and me, walk their dogs on quiet evenings.
Until next time!
Thanks for reading,
amy
