3,000 Stairs

Our second full day in London was packed full of activities! More walking, more Tube and a never-ending supply of stairs.

St. Paul's Cathedral

We started our day at St. Paul's Cathedral. Worth every "pence" we paid! It was an audio guided tour which was very well done. I wasn't expecting to be as impressed as I was with the cathedral. We'd seen it from the outside the night before and it was spectacular for sure, but what awaited us inside was breathtaking. Unfortunately they don't allow you to photograph the inside of a lot of these places. Lets just say that the acoustics are so incredible I wish I'd had my flute!

View from the top of St. Paul's looking
west. (I think)

We climbed to the top of the highest point in the cathedral and got a spectacular 360 degree view of London. By the time we got back down to the crypt we were SO tired from going up and down nearly 2,000 stairs that we kind of just skimmed through it so we could go eat lunch. (Good training for St. Helens though!)

The Tower of London

It started to rain right after we got done with our tour so we headed back "home" to pick up our coats and to purchase a couple umbrellas. After a quick lunch we headed to the Tower of London.

The walls and all the buildings at the Tower were really cool! In America we're just not accustomed to seeing things that are several centuries old. Some of the things that were on display were beautiful artifacts that were well older than our country!

The best part of the Tower was getting to see the Crown Jewels. Of course, they don't let you snap photos of those either. As my good friends will probably guess, I liked that part a lot. Pretty, shiny, sparkly things always attract me. ; )



We headed back to St. Paul's at that point to get some exterior shots since the rain had stopped.

When I'd taken my fill of pictures we headed back to Westminster Bridge and had dinner (fish and chips with Guiness) at a small little pub on the river. I wanted to get some nighttime shots of Parliment and Big Ben all lit up.






As I finished with my shooting, the skies opened up and dumped buckets of rain on us. We ducked into another little pub along the river and had a pint to wait out the storm.

Parliment and Big Ben

We learned that the tube system has a TON of stairs in it. We figured we walked around 3,000 stairs over the course of the whole day. Our legs were SO sore when we fell into bed that night.