Europe Trip 2011 #4: Shopping and St Pauls Cathedral

After a lazy start to the day, I ended up shopping with my sister. Apparently [none of you would believe this], I don't have enough style sense to purchase jeans and shirts for myself! Good news however, we went to the local Gap store, and after trying on EVERY pair of jeans and ALMOST every shirt, I came away with some clothing that passes the "sister style test".

The good news is that it was then time for Rochelle [my sister, not the met-guru-flying-instructor] to have a look in a store, so I got to babysit for a few minutes outside with Ferne, who, as could be expected, behaved for her uncle impeccably! :-)

Following this we split up for the day and I ended up doing a bit more sight seeing, including St Pauls Cathedral. What an awesome place this is! It would be hard enough designing and building something like this today, much less several hundred years ago! the "tourist's ticket" [permitting entry to the tower and the crypt] is a tad expensive, but the views around London are great. Here's hoping it doesn't get crowded out by skyscrapers!

Anyway, here are a few photos. Two from the outside and two from the very top of the tower/ dome looking down on the river. BTW - the red arrow in the second picture was where I took the last two pictures from. Nothing but an old iron fence and a thin walkway to stop you from falling! Awesome!

Europe Trip #21: London - 6 - St Pauls Cathedral View

As I was alluding to in my last post, it is amazing the amount of access the public can have to such an old building. The crypt was interesting, but was impressed me the most was the view from the top of the 500 odd steps to the highest viewing area. With hindsight it is a shame that I didn't take a couple of pictures of the landing I was on.

From memory, the guardrail is an old wrought iron structure, and in many places, it is so narrow that there is only room for a single person to stand. Awesome! :-)

Pictures consist of another shot of the outside of the cathedral, followed by the views from the top viewing area.

Europe Trip # 20: London - 5 - St Pauls Cathedral

A highlight of a trip to London was my visit to St Pauls Cathedral. It is very much a working church rather than purely a tourist attraction [worship services continue in the midst of the tourist traffic], and there's a lot to see.

Unfortunately, photography is not welcome inside the cathedral itself [although fair enough], so I can't show you the internal architecture, the whispering wall, the walk up to the tower on narrow steps and with low ceilings or the crypt [you'll just have to go and see yourself!], so I've selected a range of the external shots which might help to give you an idea of the size and presence of this building.

In my next post, I'll show you the view of from outside on the tower/ dome walkway. Impressive!

It is almost hard to believe that such an impressive structure was not only built 100's of years ago, but that it is still standing, is fit for purpose, and you have a great deal of freedom to explore parts of it. Thankfully, the Brits appear to have a substantially more sensible approach to health and safety than we do in New Zealand - if the Brits were to adopt our model, they'd have to instantly shut down most of the access to this building... and perhaps to many other buildings and in fact towns more than 50 - 100 years old! Three cheers for common sense!