London - Day Three

Morning came early, even though I slept in until 11am. I was tired and my legs were worn out. I fell out of bed and carefully showered in the 2x2 foot shower stall, then dressed in my sloppy wear, and picked up a bite to eat at the local grocery store. My plan on this day was to see St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern art museum. St. Paul's Cathedral is massive, huge, enormous, and really really big. It dominates the skyline in London's financial district. The current cathedral was built in 1675 by Christopher Wren, although a church has been standing on the site since 604 AD. The interior of the church is awe inducing, from the height of the vaulted ceiling, 100 feet above the floor, to the absolutely gorgeous ornamentation of the choir and high altar. Probably the most incredible aspect of the interior is the huge huge huge space beneath the dome. Standing below, in the middle of the floor, you literally have to crane your neck all the way back just to look up into the dome to see the frescoes decorating the ceiling. My favorite part, however, was climbing the stairs into the dome. There are three levels you can reach, the first being the Whispering Gallery, 100 feet above the floor on the interior of the dome, the second, the Stone gallery, which is on the exterior of the dome, 173 feet up, and the third, the Golden Gallery, which is 280 feet above the church floor, at the very top of the dome, and affords an absolutely spectacular view of the city. From the church floor to the Golden Gallery, there are a total of 530 steps to walk up... an utterly exhausting climb up spiral staircases. I'm drawn to high places and I managed to find myself in three of the highest vantage points in the city. After the long shaking-leg walk down, I checked out the crypt in the basement and then walked over to the Tate Modern across the Thames. The Tate Modern is a branch of the expansive Tate museum network in Britain and houses, you guessed it, modern art. While I was happy to have the opportunity to see first-hand a number of well known works, such as Monet's Water Lilies, much of the work I found to be, in the kindest word possible, schlock. I've always had a problem with the work of current artists who are considered to be on the cutting edge of art. Some of it was cool and while I can appreciate the concepts and theories behind the work, I can't appreciate a performance art piece that shows a video of a naked man from the waist down rubbing his own feces all over his body and then punching himself in the crotch as hard as he can with boxing glove clad fists. Why is this art? Explain this to me and I will clean your home for a year. I spent as much time as I could handle walking through the massive building absorbing the freaky creative vibe and decided I needed to move on when my stomach began to growl. I found my way to Leicester Square (pronounced Lester) in the hopes of finding a bite to eat. Leicester Square is the night hotspot in the center of London, just a block from Chinatown, boasts a circus-like atmosphere complete with merry-go-round and has the greatest concentration of clubs, bars, pubs, and restaurants in the city. It was a zoo. I had a good time people watching... young girls wearing painfully pointed shoes and perilously tight pants waiting in line at the disco, euro trash men, tourists, children slobbering over cotton candy, and gangs of roving drunken aggressive english youths looking for trouble. It was only 9pm on Saturday night and the restaurants were turning people away and the bars had stopped admitting patrons. It was a zoo and not a place I would like to be late at night.

My head hit the pillow early.