Solo in London

This morning Ryan had to go to a tutorial with one of his professors at like 10:30. He said he'd be back around noon, and the plan was that I was supposed to be ready to go walk around St. Paul's Cathedral and over to London Bridge and the Tower of London and all that. Ryan didn't get back till about 2pm and when he got back we were both pretty hungry so Ryan made us some burritos and we decided that it'd be fun to watch Sweeny Todd on his laptop while we had lunch. So we did that, and by the time we finished the movie it was getting late again, and we only had a couple hours left of light. I told him we had to hurry and get out of here so we can see some more of London before dark, and Ryan said he'd rather just hang out here. This, of course, didn't go over well with me because I was not at all about to spend my week in London sitting in Ryan's crappy flat on Bow Road. Ryan told me there's nothing else to do in London, all you do here is go to pubs and sit at home unless you're a tourist in which case you go see a couple "tourist attractions" (Most of which Ryan has never actually been to having lived here over a year now). Needless to say I was furious and I told him I was just going to go out and find something to do then. I grabbed my hat and coat and walked out the door. As I was leaving he asked me how I was going to know where I was. I told him I'd figure it out.

I knew where the tube station on Bow Road was, so I walked in there and asked the guy at the ticket booth if he had a map of the city. The best he could do was a map of bus routes which didn't really help me, but I'd picked up a subway schedule on a previous day which I still had in my back pocket, so I pulled that out and saw that there was a stop on the central line called St. Paul so I decided that was a good place to start, and got on the district line, switched over to the central line, and got off at St. Paul's. I explored around St. Paul's cathedral for a bit, and even attended part of a church service that was in progress when I got there. I thought it was interesting how they still seemed to section off the rich people from the peasants (or at least it looked that way). It seemed the rich looking people sat up front, and then there was a taped off line with a couple tennants guarding, and then behind them was everyone else way in the back. I sat back with the "peasants" and listened to the beautiful music of the chior echoing through the 1,000 year old walls which were all ellaborately decorated with angels and figures from biblical stories and gold encrusted sidings and precious stones of all sorts. The massive dome at the top seemed to be dipicting a great battle of cherubs and demons and men all clashing their swords in the final war of earth. The whole air of the place was actually not very happy at all I noticed. I almost laughed at first because as I walked in, the first thing I heard the priest speak about was the death, and destruction that waits for non believers and evil doers. It was as if I'd just walked into the 17th Century and we were burning some witches. The sermon was not what won my affection, but the music reverberating from the giant dome was what I stayed for. It was, in a word, glorious.

From where I figured I was, I remebered on the map at Ryan's house where about London Bridge and the Tower of London might be, so I headed in that direction. Walking for a moment I realized that I was walking down the famous Fleet Street, and it was perfect because I'd just finished watching Sweeny Todd who is The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and the movie (and of course the show) takes place there. I walked for a long way until I got to the very end of Fleet Street and came to Enbankment Bridge, which meant I had actually walked the whole time in the exact opposite direction from where I meant to. But whatever the case, I was at the Thames River now, so I figured I'd just walk up the Thames in the other direction, and I'd get to see all the sites along the river. From the Thames River I got an amazing view of Parliment, Big Ben, and the London Eye all lit up in the night and reflecting off the water, and on the other side was the dome of St. Paul's which I had just been. The bridges you could see all lined up along the river, except for London Bridge which was hidden way in the back. As I walked along the river alone I realized I really liked being by myself in this kind of situation. I'm able to take my time, and stop and look at things that I want to see. Ryan's a great guy, and I love him to death, but he's kind of a hard travel companion for me. Ryan doesn't like to walk, and when he does, he walks really fast. He really doesn't seem to like the idea of roughing it at all. He's planning on putting himself up in a hotel when he goes to visit me elsewhere in the world, so that he doesn't have to stay in a hostel. He'd much rather stay home comfortable and play video games all day then go out and see things. People like him tend to frustrate the hell out of me. I want to go outside and be with real people and see the world. I love walking through places I don't know, and I love it when I have no money. The world is really so much simpler when you just don't have any money. You get a chance to struggle. What you have to do starts to become very clear, and you don't worry about someone taking money from you when you both know you don't have any. And when you don't have money and you have to ask someone for help, that's the greatest thing that could happen to you because you humble yourself to another human being. Now, begging for money is a little different because you're relying on someone to survive, but asking for help is something we all need to do and it feels good when someone can help you, and they feel good for helping you, and now you've developed a human connection, and that is how God's love is spread in this world. Ryan doesn't understand that. He'd rather be happy and healthy and safe, and unfortunately I'm sure that's what he'll be.

Anyways, when I'm on my own I get to drink in my surroundings, and I can take all the time I want. As I was walking I was passing a bunch of beautiful structures and I knew they were famous but I had no idea what they were, so I tried to keep a mental log of everything I was seeing, so if someone asked me if I saw it I could say yes. I find myself trying to do that a lot because really I can only take so many pictures, and there's so much I see when I walk through a city (especially one as big as London) there's no way I can remember everything, but I wish I could, and I wish I could know everything I'm looking at, or even what I should be looking at. I know when I come home someone's going to be like "hey did you see that thing while you were in that place?" and I'll have forgotten to see it, or walked right by it without knowing what it was. But I guess that'll just happen regardless, I can't possibly see everything so I'll just do my best and let the rest go. I finally made it over to the London Bridge and crossed it into Southwark, which is an awesome little open market area by the docks. I walked from there a little ways over to Shakespear's Globe Theatre, and I found a cool little Turkish resturant right down the street, and ate there. Then I wandered a little further down from there and went into the Tate Modern Art Museum. That was a really cool thing to see, but I walked all over the Museum and didn't really find anything that moved me all that much. I looked long and hard at each painting and read the little plaques and tried to see what the artist saw, but that was exhausting after a while. Some things just look like a burlap sack stapled to a piece of canvas, and that's it. I really can't imagine how you get postwar Europe from that. A lot of the sculptures I really liked though. I like when they set up shapes or mirrors to do tricky things with your eyes. That seems more like art to me.

After the museum I was pretty tired, and I determined that I'd been walking for about 5 and a half hours straight, so I walked over Millenium Bridge back to the tube station at St. Paul and caught a tube back to Bow Road and walked back to Ryan's house. I'm very glad I decided to ditch Ryan for a day and walk through London. Ryan says tomorrow he'll go with me to see the Tower of London, but even he doesn't I'll just go by myself.

I've gotten a couple comments and emails saying that you want to know what country is next on the list so that you know what to pray for exactly, or so you can hook me up with people or tell me what I should see. I'm all for that, so I'll try to start including that in my blog. On Sunday at 8:05pm my flight leaves for Cairo, Egypt. I won't actually get in though, until like 5pm the next day. I have a huge layover in Fiumicino airport all night. Don't even ask me where that is, I have no idea, it doesn't say on the printout. So, that should be quite an adventure, please pray for me about that one.