I paid for the full English breakfast with my room here and it was worth it.  Looking forward to having it again tomorrow.

 

Since I knew that nobody else would be interested in this, I saved my visit to the burial place of William Marshall for when everyone was gone.  He is a major character in a series of books I’m reading and when I heard he was buried in London I had to go.  He’s buried in the Temple Church.  This is his effigy.  It was partially destroyed by the Nazis in World War Two but they are exhibiting a cast made of it before the war.  There are also effigies of his sons and King John there.  John just died in the book I’m currently reading, so now I know the author wasn’t making it up.

At the beginning of my walk I passed through some interesting quiet neighborhoods.  A lot of the street were cul-de-sacs which I haven’t seen here before.

I was planning on finally visiting Westminster Abbey, which I have never entered.  Once again, the lines were ridiculously long and I don’t spend London time waiting in line (yes I’m talking about you too Churchill War Rooms).  Luckily, on the way there I bumped into the Westminster Cathedral which had no lines and is free.

From Wikipedia:

Westminster Cathedral, or the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in London is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Here is a view of the front of the Cathedral, followed by the view you see if you turn around.  Old and new!

I also passed Little Ben.  We saw this from the bus the other day and didn’t know what it was.  Now we do.

I also made my first visit to Somerset House.  From Wikipedia:

Somerset House is a large Neoclassical building situated on the south side of the Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The building, on the site of a Tudor palace, was designed by Sir William Chambers in 1776, and further extended with Victorian wings to the east and west in 1831 and 1856 respectively.[2][3] The East Wing forms part of the adjacent Strand campus of King’s College London.

This evening I took a bus from the front step of my building across the river to Elephant and Castle in Southwark.  The plan was to walk back to the South Bank and get some pictures of London at night.  The reality was that two minutes after I started walking, it began to pour.  I was back on the next bus.  No pictures.  I went for another walk a little later and was passing by the Royal Albert Hall as tonight’s Proms performance let out.  I don’t know who was performing but they must have been scary because the crowd was FLEEING the building.  It was like they had to get to the parking lot and get in their cars or be trapped for hours.  But they don’t.  Nobody drives to the Royal Albert Hall.  They were all running for the tube which seems to run trains every 5 minutes or the bus which seems to be on the same schedule.

More from the Temple Church: