London, Day 3

Our third day saw A and I at St. Paul's Cathedral.  We had planned to make a day trip out of London to Oxford, but the train tickets were too expensive, so we scrapped that plan.  We had no shortage of things to do in London though, so we were hardly bored.  We walked through St. Paul's, craning our necks to take in the statues and the ceilings.  People's murmuring voices filled the space along with their (forbidden) camera clicks.  Shoes squeaked on the marble floors and clothes rustled.  Prayer candles flickered in the iron racks.  It was as beautiful as I remembered.  

We climbed to the Whispering Gallery and Stone Gallery, legs burning and breath hitching, and were rewarded with first a birdseye view of the cathedral's patterned floor and then a birdseye view of the city.  Then I climbed to the Golden Gallery to get the final highest view possible.  I had forgotten how narrow the final flight of stone steps were: maybe a foot wide at most.  I made it up though and shuffled around the edge of the highest dome with a crowd of other people, snapping photos.  Then I descended, and A and I got lunch.

We went to a restaurant called Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), which had been recommended to us.  It's a chain of restaurants only in England.  It had a loud companionable atmosphere with funky music blaring and a variety of glass and copper-domed lights dangling from the ceiling.  Restroom signs were giant Scrabble letters.  To order, you went up to the counter and could either order verbally or hand in a form on which you'd checked off what you wanted.  I got a blue cheese burger and a vanilla milkshake, and they were so good.  I haven't had a burger in the last two or three months and I haven't had a milkshake in even longer.  I'd forgotten how good they were.  GBK did not disappoint at all.  

My vanilla milkshake and A's chocolate milkshake

After A and I devoured our burgers and milkshakes, we headed to a garden called St.-Dunstan's-in-the-East.  I had never heard of this garden before.  A had found it online.  It was once a church, but the church had been damaged twice.  The first time had been due to fire.  It was repaired, but then it was damaged again in the Blitz.  After that, the city decided to turn it into a garden instead.  But they didn't tear down the walls.  Instead, they left the walls and window frames in place and simply filled in the empty spaces with plants and walkways.  Now there are four walls standing with open doorways and windows.  A fountain and benches sit in the center where the altar might once have been, and ivy trails all over the walls and through the windows.  It wasn't a terribly big garden and there were a lot of people there; however, it retained a sense of magic.  Something about the manmade and the natural, the immovable and the growing, the old and hidden all contributed to a sense of enchanting secrecy.  I absolutely loved it.

The church's only tower left standing

We stayed there for about an hour, reading and journaling and taking photos.  Then we went to our last stop of the day, a bookstore called Daunt.  Along the way, we encountered this stone carving of Charles Dickens in the wall of a business building.

Daunt had been recomended to us by our London host family because not only was it a nice bookstore with a large selection but it had a creative shelving scheme.  Books were shelved geographically.  If a book took place in Norway, it was shelved in the Norway section on the first floor.  If a book took place in Ethiopia, it was shelved in the Ethiopia section downstairs.  If a book took place in Wales, it was shelved in the Wales section in the upstairs gallery.  I had never thought of shelving books this way before, and I like the idea quite a lot.

Daunt also had a whole shelf of beautifully bound classics.  Actually, I saw dozens of beautifully bound classics at each bookish place I went to in London.  They all made for lovely photos.  I liked Daunt a lot.  It was in a brick building between glass and steel buildings and contained that excellent atmosphere that you can only find in book places.