London in Black and White

So once again I’ve gotten out of chronological order…oops.

Part of my two day journey included a 10-hour layover in London, during which I went into the city. Despite having only been there once for two nights two and a half years ago I managed to find my way around central London without a map and do what I wanted to do: eat at the Texas Embassy, a Tex-Mex restaurant in England where I, an American on my way to Uganda, was served fajitas by a German (what a crazy world we live in nowadays); see some of the greatest paintings of all time at the National Gallery; visit St. Paul’s Cathedral, the most beautiful man-made place I’ve ever seen; and get some great photos from one of the world’s greatest cities.

As an added bonus I was twice selected for anti-terror security screening: once at the Golden Jubilee bridges, where the Bobbies ran my name through some system and searched my camera bag, and once on return to the airport, where I myself was x-rayed (well, “body imaged”). Neither was really much of an inconvenience and British politeness goes a long way in helping to make it so. The Bobbies were actually quite friendly and were even impressed that I was going to do missionary work.

If you’ve never been to London I hope that sometime you get the chance. It truly is an amazing city, rich with history, cultural treasures, great architecture, unique character and incredible diversity (I have no where else heard so many different languages or seen such a variety of ethnicities in one place). There’s so much here you could spend weeks just seeing the sights and probably still not get to go everywhere. And as much as it’s an ancient city, it’s also thoroughly modern and constantly changing, building, renewing itself: some sights like the Tower of London may date back a thousand or more years while others, like the London Eye, are only a few years old.

What amazed me most are the two great houses of worship: St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Both date back to an age when Europeans utilized the full extent of their architectural, engineering, and artistic abilities to build great houses of worship to glorify God. The stone pattern in the ceiling of Westminster Abbey is so amazing that I think I could spend the whole day just walking around staring up at the ceiling. The paintings, mosaics, sculptures, wood carvings and gold inlays in St. Paul’s are both gorgeous and enormous, on the one hand overwhelming while on the other incredibly intricate. Furthermore, while you’re in the crypt at St. Paul’s or anywhere in Westminster, you are surrounded by some of the greatest individuals in history: Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Oliver Cromwell, Horatio Nelson, David Livingstone, kings and queens, and just about anyone of great importance to ever be born in Britain. It is quite humbling to walk amongst such great company and to realize that you’ve not done anything remotely worthy of being remembered in such an honored way.