So I'm getting a little tired of London

Friday today, our third full day in London. My god, it feels like we've been here for a week. I have to make a note of this, to not go to the big city as soon as we travel somewhere. Of course next summer, our most likely destination is Iceland, so that's not really an issue. We're staying on Leicester Square, which I doubt is really square but I forgot to bring my tape measure. Oh, and I don't care. But the Leicester (lester) Rectangle is maybe 100 feet by 150 feet. It's really small. But at any given moment of the waking day (and by this I mean after 11 or so because we're mostly talking about adolescents) there are at least a couple of thousand people in and around the square. And many more just walking by.

The next town we go to has a population of 12,000, and it covers several square miles. It can't reasonably be measured in square feet. I'm ready to be someplace else, but we have one more day in London after today. Its always hard to figure that kind of thing in advance. How much of what are you up for?

So what did we do today? Of course, before anything else, I went for a walk. I decided to head north, but after passing through a couple of nice parks, I decided to get practical and deal with our rental car that I'm picking up tomorrow. So I walked to their office to make sure I could pick the car up early.

There are a lot of nice little parks here, once you get away from the crazy parts of town. One of them was apparently all fenced in and only available to area residents in olden times. Unfortunately, they needed to melt down the fence to make armaments during the second World War, so after it was over they re-did the fence to let it be open to the public. Bummer for the area residents.

 So after breakfast, we went to the Tate Britain to see Turner paintings, but the many of the Turner paintings are not on exhibit because, wait for it, they're painting the place. Yep, we knew that smell of fresh paint was suspicious. But we did see around 20 Turner paintings (why they couldn't just move them is beyond me- they had all kinds of other exhibits going on) and a bunch by Constable, which were lovely. And we got to see them rehanging one of the Turners.

After that, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, which I had visited when I was 7 and I remember because I made a scrapbook that I dictated to my mom. Part of this scrapbook may remain- I have to look when I get home, though most of my stuff got destroyed when my parents' basement was flooded. Anyway, the thing about St. Paul's is that it's really really big in any way you can imagine. The churchy part of it is huge. It has a Nave, 2 Quires and 2 Transepts. I don't know exactly what any of those things are. I can't imagine going to a service in a place that big, unless you're just inspired by the place itself (which I guess is the idea of it all).

Then you can walk up to other parts of the church. First, the Whispering Gallery, which I still remember because it was cool that you could hear someone whisper into the wall from the other side. Then I saw you could keep walking up. So I did. And here's a bit of what I saw: First you come to Stone Gallery, which I did not realize was outside. At this point I had climbed 376 steps and 53 meters, which doesn't sound like much but you try it after you've gotten in on a senior discount. Here's what it looks like from there:

After that, you can climb up another 152 steps (but who's counting) to the Golden Gallery, which is 85 meters up. Again, maybe doesn't sound like much but that's almost 300 feet straight up. Here's the view from there:

Not too bad really. Here's an idea of what it's like coming down from there. The lower parts of the stairs are fine. They're wood and not too steep. Kind of changes as you go further up.

After that we went back to the room and rested. Then we went to the first night of the BBC Proms. As far as I can tell, the Proms were originally like snobby people's idea of high minded entertainment for the masses. I can tell you for a fact, there were no huddled masses there today. It's not super formal or anything, but pretty upscale if you ask me.

The music was good. They did a Tchaikovsky piece because it's the 400th anniversary of when Shakespeare did something. Maybe spring from his mother's loins, I'm not sure. So what could be more Shakepearean than a closeted gay 19th century Russian composer? Really. It works. Anyway, the music from Romeo and Juliet (the ballet, not the play) is very beautiful and stirring and familiar, so it was a nice way to start. The next 2 pieces were by Elgar (British and a must) and Prokofiev.

I don't know a whole lot about what they call classical music, but Prokofiev is one of those kind of bridging people, like Shostakovich and Stravinsky, who straddled between older and newer music. I know there are others but I seem to only know the Russians. Shostakovich wrote a lot of music and he smoked a pipe, at least in the picture in the program. He wrote Peter and the Wolf, so he can't be all bad.

The piece they played was choral in parts, and the lyrics were pretty remarkable. It's about Russia throwing off the yoke of Mongolian oppression. "How we hacked them down." "No enemy will penetrate Russia." Good stuff like that. In any event, it was at Royal Albert Hall, which is beautiful.

So yeah, a good day. One more day here and then out to the countryside.