London 1.0

Wow. All I can say is wow. Today we took our first trip to London and I have officially fallen in love. All of the buildings and landscapes are so spectacular it was hard to take it all in. We took the bus from Oxford to London which took about an hour and a half. Once we got there, our first stop was to Buckingham Palace. We were standing in front of it taking photos and it was unreal how massive the sea of tourists was. We had a hard time gathering the group back up when we were getting ready to leave because the crowd had swallowed like four or five of us.

 Lindsay and me in front of Buckingham Palace

 The front of Buckingham Palace

The massive sea of tourist that swallowed our group

Lindsay and me with our faculty in residence's kids in front of Buckingham Palace

The entire group in front of Buckingham Palace.

After we had regrouped and taken all of the pictures we possibly could, we began to make our way over to the London District of the Methodist building. We ate lunch here and the fun thing was there was a Black and Caribbean wedding show. We enjoyed seeing some of the interesting gowns that some of the women were modeling as they came into the cafe to eat. After we finished, we got to see the church on the upper level of the building. It was very interesting because it is home to not only the largest organ in the world, but also the largest concrete dome in the world!

Lobby of the Methodist Center

 Organ in the Methodist Center

 Cement Arch in the Methodist Center

After lunch, we walked over to see Westminster Abbey. We got to stop at a few scenic points to take some pictures of the arches and domes in from a distance. I could go on and on about how spectacular the Abbey was but I'll save that for a later post because My friend Lindsay and I want to return and attend a service there one weekend.

 The front of Westminster Abbey

 The gift shop

 The entrance to Westminster Abbey

 Worship Services

 The side of Westminster Abbey

The back of Westminster Abbey

As we continued on our trip around the city, we saw all kinds of cool and iconic London sights!

 Queen Elizabeth II Tower (aka Big Ben... It was renamed for the Queen's Jubilee) 

To the left is the house of Commons... The right side is the House of Lords

The Marble Arch (creative name, no?)

 One of many war memorials

 Memorial for the Women of World War II

 The guards that protects the now nonexistent palace.

Lion stature in Trafalgar Square

 National Gallery of Art

 London has all kinds of benches made to look like books around. They're really popular spots for the kids to climb on!

 St. Paul's Cathedral 

 The Millennium Bridge (For you Harry Potter nerds, this is the bridge that the Death Eaters tear up at the beginning of the 6th film, Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince) 

To end our day in London, we took the underground to familiarize ourselves with it. The stop we ended up at was extremely crowded and Dr. Vess's daughter didn't want to wait in line for the escalator, so she made Lindsey and me climb up these incredibly steep stairs with her. Even though we didn't get to spend a lot of time taking things in because we had so many sights to see, I fell in love with London. It's absolutely spectacular!!

xoxo

SG