Westminster Abbey (a whole lotta cool dead people!)

Today was the May Day bank holiday which means an extra day off of classes and a WONDERFUL (and very helpful) 4 day weekend for us students to finish our mountains of papers and study for our mountains of finals in the coming week.  So we took this opportunity to not only spend hours in the computer lab and library, but to spend more time seeing and doing what we still have left to see and do in London.  Thursday night Nikki and I went out to a club called O'Neill's in Piccadilly Circus and had the funnest night with 7 Spanish rugby players that we met there.  SO FUNNY!  Then I spent all of Saturday working on research and writing papers.  Blah! (and it was SUCH a beautiful day too!!)  Sunday was spent sleeping in and then walking through the park on what will probably be our last trip to Camden Market.  I found a bunch of gifts there for people I was still shopping for and found a really cute skirt on top of that!  Definitely a successful shopping trip!  After that we spent a fun night hanging out with everyone in the dorms playing games and watching movies.  Then today Cyndi and I decided to go see Westminster Abbey.  I still have several things left on my list to do this week and seeing Westminster is now one I can cross off my list....FINALLY! 

Because it was a holiday the line to get in was SOOO long, but it moved pretty fast and we got in within about a half an hour.  Not too bad.  Compared to the other hundreds of churches, basilicas, and cathedrals I've seen in my travels, Westminster Abbey architecturally isn't that impressive.  It's historical significance and the hundreds of important people who are buried within its walls which make it SO interesting.  I saw the tombs to pretty much every monarch that has sat on the throne of England, most importantly Elizabeth I, Edward I, Henry VII, Mary Queen of Scots, Richard I, and Oliver Cromwell.  I also saw the coronation chair where every monarch has been crowned since 1301.  Although it was pretty cool, the chair was made out of plain wood and looked like it was about to fall apart!  After that we saw poets corner, where about 120 writers and artists are buried.  Being able to stand at the burial site of SO MANY important writers has been one of the coolest experiences I've had here in London.  I stood on Alfred Lord Tennyson's grave marker (yes, Donny, you're uncle!), as well as Charles Dickens, D.H. Lawrence, Lord Byron, and Rudyard Kipling.  I also saw Jane Austen's grave marker (she's my FAVORITE!!) as well as Charlotte and Emily Bronte's and even Handel.  The walls of the Abbey were also COVERED in monuments and memorials to certain families and famous people in English history, including Franklin Roosevelt, Shakespeare, Sir Isaac Newton, and Winston Churchill. There was also a Grave of the Unknown Warrior (which I thought was a kind of funny comparison to the wording of our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) that was pretty cool.  Walking through Westminster was kind of like wandering through a really huge time capsule.....but a time capsule made of dead people...if that makes any sense. It was SO cool and packed to the brim with British history.  I'm really glad I finally made it there!  

Left on my list of things to do in my last week in London:

St. Paul's Cathedral       Abbey Road     the Tate Modern      picnic in the Park             

the Peter Pan statue/Hyde Park       souvenir shopping           cleaning

getting everything into my suitcases        saying goodbye          crying

figuring out how to get to Heathrow Airport with all my stuff          

.......We'll see how much of this actually gets accomplished..........