We started our last day in England going our separate ways: Dad and Jules went to find the entrance to the Ministry of Magic, Mom went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and I went to tour St. Paul's Cathedral.
The interior of St. Paul's is beautiful, but its decorations are so opulent that it felt more Catholic than Anglican - I think I prefer the more simplistic styles of York Minster and Canterbury Cathedral. The main purpose of my visit was to the climb the 500+ steps to the galleries, the first of which (the Whispering Gallery) is inside the dome, and allows you to look down over the nave. The third, the Golden Gallery, is at the very top of the Cathedral and from it you can see for miles around. Here is Westminster, with the London Eye to the left.
Here we have yet another picture of the modern towers of the City. In the background you can see the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf, the tallest of which is One Canada Square (it's the tallest building in the UK).
And here we see the Millennium Bridge from above and Tate Modern, housed in the former Bankside Power Station.
The other focal point of my tour was the crypt, where many famous Britons, including Si rChristopher Wren, the Duke of Wellington, and Admiral Nelson are buried.
I met up with Dad and Jules in Trafalgar Square and we continued on to University College London. Aside from being a beautiful collection of buildings, the college houses the "Auto-icon": the preserved remains of Jeremy Bentham, the great liberal philosopher. His skeleton has been wired together so he is sitting in a chair (with clothes on, thankfully), which is very odd but certainly something to see!
We then returned to the hotel to meet up with Mom, had some lunch, and then caught the tube and traveled to the Embankment. This is the Gloucester Road Underground Station from which all of this week's adventures have started.
We spent an hour or so walking along the north bank of the Thames, where we passed, among other things, Paul Day's Battle of Britain Memorial (I think it's much cooler than the first one we saw).
After a final walk around Westminster, including the Abbey and Downing Street, Dad and Jules returned to the hotel to pack while Mom and I caught a bus and walked through Belgravia towards Harrods. Although we couldn't afford to buy anything in the store, it was worth seeing just for the sake of it (the Food Hall is heavenly). We ate our last dinner of the trip at Coco Momo (strange, I know) and spent the evening packing.
GWV
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