In which I create a "Church Crawl" of London

This, dear readers, is a little out of order of all the stories which I will eventually tell about my time abroad.

After spending a few days in Paris I came back to London on Wednesday to stay the night before flying out Thursday in the afternoon. Since I would only have a few hours in London I wanted to make them count, but even with a plan there is too much to see and too much to leave out. With that in mind, I thought that an alternate option was in order. My time in Oxford and Paris was marked by visiting churches so I thought that extending it to London would be fitting. I found a helpful list of historic churches online while and began to plan. I would have liked to attend one last Evensong before returning to American soil but all the churches I could find seemed to hold it at 5 not 6 as they do in Oxford (Or 6:05 if you are Christ Church and special). To compensate, I thought I might attend a morning service while visiting the ones on my list. As I gathered information I realized that two churches, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral both charged admission. Since I'm a starving college student, I decided that I needed to circumvent such restrictions with the simple method of arriving for a service. I therefore built my itinerary around services at each.

My day began at 5 am. It wasn't intended to be 5 but my alarm clock was still on Paris time and I was already out of bed when I realized my (fortuitous) mistake. After leaving my bags in the hostel's storage I headed out a little after 6 am to Westminster Cathedral. I had mixed up the Cathedral, which is Roman Catholic and the Abbey, which is Anglican. This is where getting up early was a blessing in disguise. The Cathedral had an earlier service at 7, so I was able to sit and draw for a while. As I sat there I got surrounded by about 10 pigeons who just sat and stared at me.

The exterior was gaudy brickwork, but inside was dark and luxurious.

Afterward, I was able to make it to the 8 am service at the Abbey just in time. We couln't take pictures in there, but I did see a monument to Handel and another to the Wesley brothers.

After Westminster Abbey I headed off to St. Martin in the Fields which is on one corner of Trafalgar's Square. I enjoyed the way it resembled a church you might find in New England for its Greek revival style pediment and cornices. It also had pew boxes along the sides.

 I had breakfast there in the crypt before popping back on the Tube to the Tower of London. Dandelion & Burdock is strange stuff.

I found All Hallows by the Tower which was a favorite of William Penn, of Pennsylvania, and also where John Quincy Adams was married.

 Even more interesting was the delightful Saxon arch and the tessellated Roman floor.

Back to the streets as I walked toward Southward Cathedral on the other side of the river by the Globe. On the way I found St. Magnus the Martyr and popped in for a quick look. I was ahead of schedule anyway and wanted to add to the list I had. It is another of Wren's churches and was rebuilt after the Great Fire of London.

I found Southwark but it was closed to visitors because of a graduation ceremony.

It was around 11:20 when I left the area to walk toward St. Paul's. I was very early for the 12:30 service, but I saw another spire and thought I would try to find it. Find it I did, and found St. Martin, another Christopher Wren church and where William Penn was married.

Done there, I had lunch sitting outside of St. Paul's and then went in.

We got to sit up in the choir which was an interesting experience. At Christ Church Cathedral for Evensong I would usually sit up in the choir as well, but there everyone in the building was participating in some way with the service. At St. Paul's we sat up there so that we could remove ourselves from the throngs of people who were just  milling about. It definitely created a feeling of inclusivity as the service progresses, but it reminded me even more of what we learned about the early practices of the church in England. When Rood screens were still common they acted as a separation between clergy and lay so that the laypeople could observe from afar but only participate briefly. Now it just felt like we were acknowledging a closer bond between us as a group because we cared enough to go, but also that there was a vast separation between those who did not believe and just came for the spectacle and those who came for Christ. (Not that those who didn't come were all pagan or that I wasn't also there to look around as well.)

To recap, by 1 pm I had seen 8 churches and been to 3 services and all under 6 hours. Then I went about found Oxford Street. Excuse the tired face. I had been on my feet in the hot sun all day.

Then I went back to my hostel to retrieve my bags and flew out of London at 6 pm.

Pretty pictures from Acadia

Since I am bogged down researching and writing essays right now, here is the last installment of my pictures from the now not so recent trip to Acadia.

Warning: This post is picture heavy, and full of gratuitous "art shots".

Bleeding Hearts from Mom's garden.

Lilac leaf and flowers from the yard.

Wild blueberry flowers taken on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, a closeup of a rocky puddle with lichen and moss.

Tuesday evening.

Lichen. Very obvious focal length.

Also from the garden on Monday morning.

Tuesday.

Barnabas and Ben overlooking the ocean on top of Penobscot Mt.

Spiderweb on the bridge.

Watercolor painted on the Tuesday evening while Barnabas rappelled.

Cadillac Mountain through Jackpine needles on Champlain Mt.

A Cairn on Champlain Mountain.

The entire mountain was made of a rosy granite spotted with green and gray lichen.

Thunder Hole.

Granite breaks into simple geometrics. It's part of what makes the trails so easy.

This one's for you Dad

Happy Father's Day and all that. 

I found a puzzle for you.

This is a tree that grows beside my residence hall. Clearly, there is something strange going on. What are the (I'm assuming) two types of tree here?

A little history of The Vines, my residence hall.*

It was built in 1889 by Sydney Howard Vines (1849-1934) after he was elected a fellow at Magdalen College, where C. S. Lewis was a fellow between 1925-1954. Vines, after which the building was named, was an excellent botanist, though not a great teacher. He eventually withdrew to his house to tend the garden. Eventually it passed into the hands of Oxford United Hospitals as a nurses' home, then to Oxford Brooks University as a student residence hall, and finally to SCIO, the program with which I am studying, in 2004. 

I'm thinking that Vines grafted two trees together just to see what would happen and it seems to have flourished.

*Adapted from the SCIO Handbook

Bonus:

This is a 1,100 year old yew tree next to the Norman Church in Iffley. I never got a full shot of it, so ignore Dr. Jenkins. They were sacred to the Saxons and were often put on the south side of sacred burial grounds. The church was built after the tree was already a couple of hundred years old in c. 1170 and hasn't changed much since.

Acadia: Friday

Edit: I had a couple of posts which I was preparing but then they got lost, so here is one from Acadia. 

On our last full day at Acadia we decided to take it easy. Everyone was feeling a bit worn-out from hiking and biking. My everything hurt. We spent the day as a family riding around the Loop Road and seeing all of the sights to be seen directly off the road. The first thing we did was climb the South Bubble, a not quite mountain on the edge of Jordan Pond. Sylvia and Mom went around the easy trail but we went straight up the rocky slope on the South side. 

We paused to catch our breath and let our legs stop hurting.

Almost at the top, we found a ledge that overlooked Jordan Pond and the Cliff Trail that we took on Tuesday.

At the top we found the Bubble and tried to push it off.

It didn't work.

The entire family!

There is not trail there at the moment, so Barnabas is contemplating adding one.

Post hike maybe-this-will-make-it-feel-better stretch. It didn't.

After descending we drove to Thunder Hole, which we reached at low tide. When the tide is higher the surf bursts from that hole with a bang and soaks everyone nearby.

Sometimes you just need to nap.

In front of us is the Monument of Monument Cove. Not very impressive from this angle, but no one felt like climbing down. This was just before a Ranger stopped and told us not to fall down. Most people don't try to, so I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish.

Back at Sand Beach Sylvia and I strolled along the surf looking for interesting things.

Which we found, including a live starfish.

We finished the day with a walk around Bar Harbor. Barnabas and I joined Dad, Ben, and John after they had talked with this native and ship's carpenter. He invited us onto the Margaret Todd, a four masted Schooner.

Mind the Gap!

Note the correct phonetic spelling on the sign.

Governors for dinner.