1982 St Paul's Cathedral, Soane Museum, and Jubilee Market (7/7/1982)

Wednesday, July 7, 1982

Breakfast and out by 9:00 on a sunny day! We walked to the South Kensington Station and used our Rover passes again to take the Circle Line to Notting Hill Gate. Changed to the Central Line to Marble Arch. Newspaper headlines about the BritRail strike have been varying: from "a few more trains are running" to "there is no end in sight," "BritRail is losing money," but "things look encouraging." But so far, there is still a strike!

We came up to the surface to see the station namesake, the Marble Arch (1827 designed by John Nash) built for Buckingham Palace but supposedly found to be too small for the Queen’s carriage! Actually, only royalty and their escort may pass through this arch. No one was speaking at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park at this hour.

We found the London Transport Sightseeing Tour stop and asked if we could use the Rover pass on tours. No. So we took a double-deck bus to St Paul’s Cathedral. It was neat to view the passing world from the upper deck, where we could examine bald heads and flower pots on second story ledges. Another double-deck bus came unbelievably close to us and it was strange to look over and see no driver. It was rush hour so it was a good thing we weren’t in a rush. Slowly passed through the commercial district and had a peek down Carnaby Street, the fashionable pedestrian shopping street.

Passed through Piccadilly Circus with all the neon signs, and circled around through Trafalgar Square. Saw the Jubilee Market (1904), a glass-roofed market place. The Royal Courts of Justice (1873-1882 by George Edmund Street) were on our left and the Temple Church (1185) on our right. We were deposited on the doorstep of St Paul’s Cathedral (1697, designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren) at 10:00. A concert was being set up in the cathedral, which was the site of Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding in 1981. The front part of the church had beautiful ceiling mosaics. Sue listened in on a 10 pence/15 cent audiotape to learn the dimensions and building history. We decided to run to the post office around the back of the cathedral where Sue tried calling Gatwick Airport to reconfirm her plane reservation. She used a regular pay phone, dial first, pay when answered, pay more when it beeped at you, etc. After several tries she got through only to learn she couldn’t reconfirm at this end. Huh?

Returned to St Paul’s to pay 70 pence/$1.25 to enter the crypts.

St Paul's crypts ticket

We passed hundreds of tombs, including that of Sir Christopher Wren who was the first buried here. Also of Admiral Horatio Nelson, Florence Nightingale, Sir Alexander Fleming (discovered penicillin), and Sir George Williams (founder of the YMCA), as well as dozens of military, literary, and artistic figures.

Perused the treasures of the cathedral, including Jubilee capes (one from 1977 was beautiful with all the churches of London embroidered on it). An exhibit of photos of the restoration of historic landmarks from the White Tower to Stonehenge. Back in the church proper, we sat to rest in the pews. Here the kneelers were covered in plain brown vinyl, whereas in Westminster Abbey they were cushions with intricate needlepoint, hanging on hooks in front of the seats.

Now we were ready to pay another 70 pence/$1.25 to climb a circular staircase to the dome of St Paul’s.

St Paul's Dome ticket

We reached the “whispering” gallery, a sort of catwalk at the base of the dome.

View of the altar from the "whispering" gallery

My knees got weak! Kids were putting their heads to the wall to whisper and see if their companions could hear at other spots around the wall. We climbed a narrower staircase and were at a higher level, but outside the dome! Took a wrought-iron staircase up over the dome until we reached a walkway essentially on top of the dome! A hazy view!

View from the top of St Paul's

We made our way back down and out to the St Paul's Square or Churchyard, where a couple was putting on a comedy sketch that dragged on a bit too long.

St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral dome

We got lunch at the nearby Marina Snack Bar that was more like a deli. Sue got a peanut butter and banana sandwich and apple pie, and I had a chicken omelette sandwich. Headed to the St Paul tube station to take the Central Line to Holborn, and walked the few blocks to the Sir John Soane Museum at Lincoln Inn Fields. The museum was designed by Soane as his home and to display his large collection of antiquities, paintings and drawings, and his own architectural drawings and models. Compared to its neighbors, its façade filled with statues was unique. We checked our bags, bought the 10 pence/18 cent guide since admission was free, and first remarked on the curving stairway with the continuous maple railing. From dining room to library with three arches, mirror frescoes, Greek & Egyptian urns, and astronomical clocks. The study and dressing rooms were each about 4-foot square, and filled with fragments of Egyptian and Roman ruins, as was the back corridor. The picture room had panels that opened up to reveal at least three layers of paintings. Downstairs in the Monk’s Parlour were fragments and casts of pieces of Soane-designed buildings, a cross bow, statues, etc. The rest of the basement contained burial urns and a beautiful large Egyptian sarcophagus. Went back upstairs in a corridor and under the dome to see more stuff, and you had a view down on the sarcophagus in the basement.

There were paintings and busts of Soane, and his drawings and models. A new picture room held paintings by Canaletto of Venice scenes. There were other small rooms and niches, then a breakfast room. Mirrors were hung everywhere, including a row of small round mirrors. Up a stairway, an unused space was turned into a Shakespeare niche. Upstairs were two drawing rooms that were nicely furnished, but filled with architectural models, drawings and paintings. After we left the Soane Museum, we checked out number 59-60 Lincoln Inn Fields which was a stark building designed by Inigo Jones.

We walked to the Old Curiosity Shop (16C), made famous by a Charles Dickens novel of the same name.

The Old Curiosity Shop

You could see that the door had to be made taller, and the ceilings dipped and swayed. The shop was stuffed with curios and souvenirs, and it seemed people came just to look and not buy!

We returned to the Holborn Station to take the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square to check out the half-price theatre ticket options, but nothing appealed to us. We checked out full-price tickets at Her Majesty’s Theatre on Haymarket, and bought 4.50 GBP/$8 tickets to see “Amadeus.”

We walked up to Piccadilly Circus to catch the Piccadilly Line tube to Convent Gardens, and walked to Jubilee Market. There was glass roofing over the streets with several rows of shops and boutiques selling gifts and clothing, and there was an underground level.

Jubilee Market

We had hoped to see the Cockneys selling fresh produce and candies. On the other side was a wooden-roofed arcade with stalls selling toys and kitchenware. We found a fruit stand to buy some apples. There were a few street musicians in the streets, but most of the entertainers seemed to take turns in the large square in front of St Paul’s Convent Garden, a plain little church designed by Inigo Jones that is in the opening scene of the play “Pygmalion” (later adapted as the musical “My Fair Lady”) by George Bernard Shaw. It is also the site of the first recorded mention of a “Punch and Judy show” by Samuel Pepys in 1662. We saw the end of a comedy sketch with an acrobatic dying scene, saw but didn’t hear a fat lady sing, heard but didn’t see a punk rock group, and half heard and half saw a Punch and Judy show, which was pretty violent. Punch was bungling his job of watching the baby and gets sentenced to hang, but when the hangman shows Punch how to put his head in the noose, he hangs himself. There were also mimes, but most people had their attention on a red-haired lady in a black dress who was signing autographs, then walked towards a movie camera.

We went to Cranks Health Foods shop in Jubilee Market for dinner where Sue had an alfalfa sandwich on whole wheat with cheese melted on top, and I had a wonderful cream of mushroom soup and a salad of walnuts, raisins, apples, and celery. And an apple juice I forgot to shake first! We decided to walk to Her Majesty’s Theatre. We saw a postman collecting mail from a box and Sue handed him a postcard to mail. We were still early for the play, and so walked behind the theatre to see the oldest shopping arcade in London, the Royal Opera Gallery, with shops selling military articles and old prints.

Her Majesty's Theatre ticket

Returned to the theatre to claim our seats three rows up in the second balcony, a bit higher than in the last theater. Like in the other theatre, little opera glasses were hooked behind every pair of seats, and they could be freed for 10 pence/18 cents, or by knocking your backpack against them like Sue did! We tried the pair that popped off, but they didn’t magnify very much. We still couldn’t identify the “head” on the spinet or the goodies on a plate. “Amadeus” was a musical and was good although we couldn’t understand everything. We could have used hearing aids instead of opera glasses!

Went back to the hostel by way of the tube from Piccadilly to South Kensington. The light switch is on the outside of the bathrooms and someone turned off the light when I was showering, but then they turned it back on, probably when I squealed. We had a full house in our dorm, which has become coed.