Paul and Albert

Note to self – Don’t plan as many things in a day as you did in 2019. We’re three years older and slower.

Our poor feet wore out after only 10000 steps today so we didn’t visit a few things we thought we’d get to today but we still had a full day. We started the day by walking to London Bridge station (about 15 minutes) to get the bus to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was only 9:30 when we arrived to it was relatively empty. It’s a beautiful church designed by Sir Christopher Wren and replaced the church destroyed in the Great London Fire of 1666. We visited the main church and the crypt but took a pass on climbing the 528 steps to the dome.

St. Paul’s Cathedral is the only domed church in London.
From the front of the Cathedral.
Monument to Wellington
Cathedral Dome
I think I’m might try this for my next stained glass project.
Choir boxes.
Wellington’s Crypt
Nelson’s Crypt

After visiting the Cathedral, we picked up the Golden Tours Hop On/Hop Off bus. Both this bus and the Big Bus were included in our London Pass but this one came first so we hopped on. We were headed to Royal Albert Hall which is only about 4 miles as the crow flies but we were in a tourist bus so the route wasn’t the most direct. Also, traffic was horrible so it took over 90 minutes to get there. It was a relaxing drive, though, and we passed through several areas that we may, or may not, get back to so we’re glad we made the trip.

We got to the Royal Albert Hall just in time for the 12:30 tour and it was terrific. The Hall celebrated its 150th anniversary last year but because of the pandemic they didn’t have the celebration they had originally planned. There are over 400 performances per year, which is more than one per day.

In front of the Royal Albert Hall.
From the gallery which is the upper most (5th) level. These are standing tickets although people bring their yoga mats and lay on the floor. The “mushrooms” handing from the ceiling are to help with the acoustics.
Royal Box. When not in use by a member of the Royal Family, anyone who works for the Firm (could be a gardener in Winsor Castle) can request to use the box. The only caveat is that they have to dress in formal attire and pay 5 pounds which is donated to charity. Pretty cool deal.
Stairway the Royal Family uses to get to the box. There is a lift if the Queen needs it. If she takes the lift, special drapes are used to cover the walls.

Across the street from the Theater is the Albert Monument. It took over 10 years to construct and cost about 120,000 pounds (about 13,000,000 pounds in 2022). They spent so much on the monument they didn’t have anything left to build the theater. They raised money by selling boxes to the wealthy patrons. Each box seat was 100 pounds which, when adjusted for inflation, is just over 13,000 pounds. The boxes either had 5 or 12 seats so a family buying an entire box was investing a lot of money. For their 100 pounds, they had use of the seat for every performance for 999 years. Quite the deal!

Albert Monument. Made with real gold and has precious jewels embedded. No wonder it cost so much. The monument is directly across the street from the Hall.

Behind the Monument is Hyde Park. We wanted to see the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain but took a wrong turn and ended up back at the Albert Monument, which is where we started. Since we were getting tired, we decided to pass on the fountain. Maybe we’ll see it another time.

Hyde Park

We were going to walk to Hyde Park corner where Wellington’s Arch is located but ran out of steam about half way there. We were right across the street from the Knightsbridge tube station but we would have had to transfer at least once and decided it was too much trouble. So, we jumped in a cab. With traffic, it still took over 30 minutes to get to the other side of the city so it was almost 4pm before we finally got home.

While tiring, it was a great day and we look forward to visiting Westminster Abbey, Churchill’s War Rooms and the Imperial War Museum tomorrow. That should be enough for one day.

The great news is that internet is finally up and running! Apparently there was an outage in the entire area. Hopefully it will work for the rest of our stay. The blog is so much easier to write when I can use all my fingers to type.

Have a great day everyone.

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