London: Day 5 (May 17, 2012)

It was a great day.  We went to Westminster Abbey, which is incredibly old!  But some of the architecture is incredibly stunning.  Pictures are not allowed inside the abbey but I would have loved to take some pictures of some of the stained glass.  But I saw the memorials to all the famous kings and queens and learned a few things about British History, none of which I can remember at this precise moment as it is late and I have a headache, but I know you just want to see the pictures anyway so I will spare you the wordy descriptions.  These pictures are all from either outside or other buildings on the grounds.

After we finished at Westminster we walked to Buckingham Palace.  We walked through St. James Park, which is a truly lovely park.  We got distracted on the way by the pigeons that will fly up and land on your arm if you put a little piece of bread there and this other bird with the strangest feet I have ever seen.  These sort of webbed feet that aren’t really webbed.  As a side note, the pigeons in NYC are disgusting, but the pigeons in London are not nearly and dirty and diseased.  I didn’t at all want one to land on me, but I did condescend to take some video footage (to be released at a later date).

The palace was really busy and there are no tours.  I guess the Royal family ought to be able to have some privacy.  The Queen is celebrating the Diamond Jubilee in a couple of weeks so the palace grounds and a number of other places are under construction and preparations for various events happening for the celebration.  The Diamond Jubilee celebrates the 60-year anniversary of Elizabeth being Queen.  I think the only other Queen to have a diamond Jubilee is Victoria.  Just FYI, Victoria reigned for 63 years.  So if Elizabeth lives for more than 3 years she will oust Victoria out of her record.

We spent the afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery and to be honest by that time I was done in.  But I persevered and at least walked through the whole gallery to stop at the portraits that caught my eye rather than reading each little placard and stopping at each portrait. 

This evening we saw Madame Butterfly.  This is an opera by Puccini and so far it is my favorite of the productions we have seen.  I was on the second to last row and there were no microphones for the orchestra or the singers and I could hear everything.  And it all sounded really great!  Then technically, it was a very visually beautiful production.   I am not a great fan of opera, but as I said this is my favorite so far.  And as far as opera goes, it was Puccini who just writes really beautiful music.