writing - visual - misc - huh?
churches and cathedrals are obviously a big draw to london's architecture tourists. a real challenge would be to travel to london and somehow not see them.
all soul's church
stumbled into this after turning the wrong way en route to hamley's toy store. i liked all the construction cranes hovering around behind it.
southwark cathedral
or while walking along the south bank of thames, heading west towards the tate modern, ancient southwark confronts you.
st. martin in the fields
a classy piece of architecture sitting across the street from the national gallery, national portrait gallery, and trafalgar square. one thing i became aware of is how many of these famous places are crammed into a single block.
temple church
or if you've been reading the da vinci code, like nine trillion other people, you can wander down a lane and find temple church buried in a courtyard. it's surrounded by other buildings which makes picture taking difficult. this seclusion does keep a lot of people from stumbling into it, however, like our host who works in the neighbourhood and hadn't seen it until we went looking for it.
st. paul's cathedral
religious or not, the interior of st. paul's is exhilarating and awe inspiring to view. they are picky about cameras inside, so here's some exterior views.
first a shot of st. paul's filthy apse:
then a shot from the dome, illustrating the ongoing restoration work:
and finally a view of paternoster square from the top of st. paul's:
shri swaminarayan mandir
one of our new friends in london took us to the hindu temple where he and his family go. i couldn't take any pictures as they took security more seriously here than at stansted airport. the shri swaminarayan mandir is breathtaking, and very worthwhile to visit. here's a description from the website that gives an idea of what makes this place so special:
Using 5,000 tonnes of Italian Carrara marble and the finest Bulgarian limestone, it was hand-carved into 26,300 pieces by 1,526 skilled craftsmen.
Traditionally, all the masonry of such a mandir is loadbearing in itself, with no reinforcement from ferrous metals, such as steel in its foundation or structure. This in itself extends the life of the mandir to over a thousand years due to absence of erosion through temperature variations or corrosion of steel. The cantilevered dome is believed to be the only one in Britain that does not use steel or lead. The ferrous metals concentrate earth's magnetic field, which impedes meditation.
westminster abbey
can one go to london and not visit westminster abbey? naturally, we went and paid a visit to dear chaucer, dr. johnson, dickens, newton and darwin.
while it is certainly no where nearly as awe inspiring as st. paul’s, it is of course impressive and worth visiting. fortunately, the tourist herd wasn’t too crazy when we went but standing behind obnoxious tourists is enough to push one to violence. fat foreigners, of a certain north american country i will not point at, resting their lazy asses on top of people’s tombs and talking at ear splitting volume while they hold up queues and generally act like egocentric wastrels.
and then there is the institution of the church itself, and the necessary evil of its economic security relying on pandering to tourists. the thing most distressing about the marketing arm of the church is how capital supersedes decency. for instance, in the north cloister at westminster abbey there is a coffee stand and postcards for sale. unfortunately, all of this sits on top of grave markers on the floor. you have the cream and sugar table rolling over and defacing the marker of someone’s burial site. given that the church viewed these individuals’ deaths significant enough events to grant them a permanent memorial it is quite disgusting that they then trod over the dead with such deliberate carelessness.