Buildings Galore!

Each day in London that we have an outing we have a photo focus. That means we’re constantly looking for photo opportunities that include a certain theme, and the best is posted to our group Facebook page (see link to right of screen if you haven’t visited there yet). These foci include such things as flowers, buildings, contrasts, and many more. Today was buildings, and let me begin by saying I was less than thrilled with this focus when we got to our first stop of the day, the Museum of London. The Museum of London is a wonderful, free museum that displays London’s history in chronological order. This begins in prehistoric times and goes right through to present day. The exhibits were wonderful and I learned a great deal. For example, did you know that London opened the world’s first underground railway in 1863? And, from the middle ages through the mid-19th century if you owed someone money you’d be sent to debtors’ prison until you could repay your debt as well as your prison expenses! I even got to walk into a prison cell that had prisoners’ carvings on the walls. Really neat stuff, that. Despite this, the building that houses the Museum of London is ugly. One of the few truly ugly buildings I’ve seen in London, actually. This obviously made my photography focus of buildings seem a daunting task. But as I found on Thursday when our photo focus was contrasts, when you start to look for a certain thing, it will appear. The rest of the day I was seeing beautiful, strange, and interesting buildings everywhere I looked.

This certainly included St. Paul’s, which was our second stop of the day. St. Paul’s is London’s Cathedral. As I learned today, “cathedral” literally translates to “bishop’s chair,” so the church which is home to the Bishop of London is the Cathedral. You may have seen pictures of this building before, but I can assure you they do not do it justice. St. Paul’s is not only massive, it is awesome, in the truest sense of the word. The beauty and grace of the architecture quite literally takes your breath away, and it’s not something you get used to. Our group had a tour with Chris and not only learned the fascinating history of the church but we were also able to see some of the behind-the-scenes places of the building, which was by far my favorite part of the day.

And, after almost 300 steps (and that’s just going up!) I made it to the highest point tourists can go, the Golden Gallery. There really aren’t any words except amazing, fantastic, breathtaking, and “I have to climb down all those stairs now?!” Sorry, that last one was just my sore feet talking. Seriously, though, if you ever get to London, make the effort and go to the top. Not to be missed.

So it turns out, despite my initial worry about finding a suitable building to photograph, I now have too many pictures to choose from. I shouldn’t have worried; there will always be a plethora of photo-worthy images to focus on in London.