St. Paul's Cathedral: Taking Holiness to New Heights

One of the best things about my classes over here are the field trips that we get taken on. I think that this is the program's way of ensuring that even the most apathetic of students will be forced to go out on at least one or two cultural outings. I love these trips because I don't have to pay to see many of the things that I would otherwise have to shell out £10 for.

Yesterday we went to St. Paul's Cathedral for my history class. I would pay the admission price to go again.

It is an absolutely beautiful cathedral with amazing views of the city. As soon as we entered the cathedral, our professor immediately had us set out on the long climb to the top. The cathedral has three different galleries as you go up. The first gallery, called the Whispering Gallery, is at the base of the domed ceiling and it gives you a stunning view of the quire and the area leading to the alter. It's called the whispering gallery because apparently if you are whispering at one wall it can be heard across the dome. I didn't get a chance to try this out, but I really want to go back and see if it's true. As I was walking around the whispering gallery, the choir started preparing for the five o'clock mass. Although they were more than 30 meters below, the sound of their voices floated up to us, providing a stunning background music to the scene.

We then continued up to the Stone Gallery, where we got an amazing view of the city of London. Once again there was that striking contrast between the old and the new, with the London Eye looming against the sky in one direction, the Globe Theatre nestled against Tate Modern Museum across the Thames, and the Tower Bridge cropping up to the East. Unfortunately, this was as high as we could climb that day. There is one more gallery farther up called the Golden Gallery that I really want to go back to see.

After we descended from the galleries, we explored the crypts. The one thing that stunned me most about St. Paul's was how clean everything was. The crypt was extremely well lit and well preserved, standing in my mind as a sharp contrast to Westminster Abbey. At Westminster it was very well kept also, but you could appreciate a bit more the history of the building. You could see the dust and the age of the place in the corners. St. Paul's was absolutely immaculate, and to some extent the crypt felt almost like a museum.

Once we were done in the crypt, our professor suggested that we walk over the Millennium Footbridge and look back on the cathedral. It was the perfect time of day to do this. It was dusk and the street lamps were just turning on, casting the perfect glow around the cathedral dome. After crossing I walked down the south bank walk way and up to the Westminster Bridge before taking the tube home. It was a beautiful walk in the early evening, and as I walked the whole city was lighting up.