Days 30th, 31st, and 32nd

May 13th:

Travel day!  Really and truly.  Me and mum got on the train back to London... arrived at the Lime Tree Hotel... and crashed.  Slept.  Zzz... the entire day.  Except for one mission to acquire food.

May 14th:

Mum and I started out the day heading to St. Paul's, only to discover that it was closed for the day for some kind of event.  Disappointed, we wandered the streets for a little bit before we decided to just trolley over to the British Library, and boy was that a good decision!  The BL was incredible, really demonstrated what book and history dorks me and mum truly are.  Some of the things that we went nuts about:  Massenger prompt book, a First Folio, the original music sheets from Mozart and Handel, Beethoven's tuning fork, the Magna Carta, Davinci's sketches, one of three surviving Tyndale translations of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus (aka, the Gospels version 1.0), and the St. Cuthbert Gospel (oldest European book that is still intact).  OMG SQUEE!  That was just the gallery.  The exhibition included a painting of Hobbitton-across-the-water by Tolkein, Stow's Survey of London, and original drafts from Rowling...

After that, we went to St. Martin's Cafe in the Crypt, ate a tasty spicy meal (which I got to co-opt), then checked out St. Martin's briefly before walking across the street to the National Portrait Gallery.  The Gallery is more interesting than I thought it would be.  It had a lot of images I know from textbooks... like portraits of Elizabeth, Cecil, Wolsey, Drake, Raleigh, Leicester, Dudley, Cranmer, Cromwell, Mary I, Phillip II, Richard III, Henry VIII... My previously-blown mind was turned into goo.

After all that excitement, me and mum went and got more tasty goodies from the pink shop before we crashed.

May 15th:

Mum and I's last day here.  First stop:  St. Paul's.  They let us in this time.  No pictures allowed, of course, but I was too awed to be angry for any period of time.  Even though it's not an ancient cathedral, it is still a beautiful, beautiful building.  I have the need for there to be cathedrals in the states, cathedrals like I've seen in the last month.  I've fallen in love with cathedrals.  St. Paul's threw me a bone, too... it let me climb.  Some 200 steps up are the Whispering Galleries, where you can look down into the interior of St. Paul's and peer at the little people praying.  Next, where I boldly ventured by myself, was another 200 steps of narrow, winding stairs.  At this stop was the Stone Gallery, where you can look from the edge of the dome over London.  And then after another roughly 150 stairs, very tight, lots of heights, you get to the Golden Gallery, an amazing view of London.  I was giddy.  And I took pictures.  Lots of them.  I deserved it after all that climbing :-P.  I love heights.  Going down was... interesting.  I wish the individual stairs were larger.  I trust me not to fall... but I don't trust other people, say, behind me, especially if they are larger than me.

I thought I misplaced my mother for about ten minutes, but I found her.  After St. Paul's, we went looking for souvenirs, got our luggage from the Lime Tree, and I saw Mum off on the Piccadilly Line, took the line myself to the YHA, checked in, then rushed off to the Globe where I watched 1 Henry IV (review upcoming) and the first half of 2 Henry IV.  Came back to the YHA, and now I'm spending my last bit of time here in London.