Day 5 - The day of stairs
Day 5 began with our daily bout with the internet and banks. We began the day with St. Paul's Cathedral. It was great. It was huge. It was big. It was pretty. It was impressive. It was very tall. It had many steps. It had many, many steps. Yep.
The inside is just about indescribable. It's one thing to see pictures of a cathedral, but another thing entirely to be inside one. We were also able to climb up to the second level inside, and then the third and fourth levels outside (staircase inside, but you come out on the top of the dome). The stone steps going up had two worn away places where hundreds of feet had walked up and down over hundreds of years. Seeing the city from the top of the dome was amazing. And my knees were killing me the next day...and this was just the beginning of the stairs.
After St. Paul's we went to The Monument (yes, that is the official name). It is a monument to the fire of London, and consists of a very tall thin building housing a spiral staircase with 311 steps. If you make it to the top and back you get a certificate. The view is really cool. after this we went to the oldest church in London, where John Quincy Adams was married. They even have the book on display with the records of John Q Adams' marriage. As are basically all old churches that we've seen, the inside was so beautiful. Leaving this, we headed to the Tower of London. The Tower of London should really be called the Fort of London, I think, as it is really quite big and certainly not just one tower. One of our favorite parts was seeing the real crown jewels of England. Ones that have been in use for many, many years along with all this coronation stuff that only comes out when they crown a new ruler. It was really amazing. You basically walk inside this huge vault to look at it. It started to sprinkle right as the Tower of London closed, so we decided to head home and call it a day.