i am sparticus: London Tourism Day One

London Tourism Day One

So, not starting work till Monday gives me four days of being a tourist in London (if you count today, which I do). Today was day one, and here are my observations:

You can drop 2p coin's from the top of The Monument, but it just gives people bad headaches. Realistically if you want to kill someone from a great height you probably want to use a grand piano.

The Monument is by far and away the coolest little known err... monument in all of London. The very fact you just had to follow through the link to Wikipedia shows how unknown it is. Basically it's a big classical pillar built to commemorate the Fire of London and to celebrate all the great and glorious reconstruction. The column has a very spiralled stair case inside of it, 311 steps in all. The view from the top is spectacular spanning from the Gherkin and the blue birds perched on the Lloyds' building all the way around to the Gherkin and the blue birds perched on the Lloyds building. That's 360° panoramas for you. You can also see the transmitter at Crystal Palace though, which is pretty impressive, it also manages to fool small children into thinking they can see Paris which makes me giggle.

I took some really good photos today, possibly my favourite ones ever. This is one of them.

Just a few metres down from the Monument is St Magnus the Martyr a small church built by Sir Christopher Wren at some point during his rather large architectural career. The church is still open and in use and is of the slightly high Anglican persuasion. This means that they believe that the Church of England never really became a Protestant church, rather the church is still catholic, the pope is still infallible and Henry VIII is still married to half of his wives. It's a bit odd and a good, if minor, example of historical revisionism. One of the information panels at the back of the church reads something along the lines of "during the changes with the church at the time of Henry VIII never was the word 'Protestant' used". Yes, well during the writing of that document never was the phrase "this is nonsensical history" used. Your point is?¹ High Church issues aside the church is very pretty in an heavily overdone style and wins points for hundreds of years ago having their vestry knocked down to build the first ever bridge over London. That's quite splendid.

Further up the North Bank is St Paul's Cathedral which is very grand and impressive. It's also £9 to enter. This is shocking. I'm not too bothered that places of historical interest charge money for entry, I wish they could all be free but they're not and that's fair enough. What bothers me though is that St Paul's is London's main church(and therefore arguably Britain's main church) and still an active place of worship. How can they charge money to enter a place of worship? This is wrong. What makes me even more annoyed is that on the doors as you enter are written the words "This is the Temple of God, God's presence is here" (or something like that, please forgive me but for all my fact checking I can't find out what it exactly reads). That statement is theologically stupid and grossly misleading and if the people who run the temple genuinely believe it then they are actively charging money to let people meet with God. Charging people to meet with God! That's one of the most outrageous ideas I can possibly think of! God sent His Son to die on a cross to defeat every possible barrier to people freely meeting with God and someone now wants to charge people for this? If God has given everything in the world to make something free and accessible charging for it is an immense transgression.

That aside, and to finish on a lighter note, the salvation army needs to work on it's punctuation, American tourists should try to blend in more, This is the best sign ever and This maybe the worst.

Tomorrow, Westminister proper.

The Monument from the bottom. Including my blurry head.

¹ If you think I'm mean to those of a High Church persuasion then I'd like to clarify that I don't think the High Church is nearly as bad as some make it out to be. Also, they're generally not part of the Liberal section of the church which endears them to me greatly.

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