Feed The Birds, Tuppence a Bag…

One of my earliest memories was of the iconic Mary Poppins’ song “Feed the Birds” in which an elderly woman sold birdfeed from the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral for tuppence a bag.

On Saturday, I spent the afternoon exploring the cathedral and basking in its amazing history. The other day, I talked about how central St. Paul’s is to much of London, and how views of it have been protected. It is so iconic that during WWII, Winston Churchill demanded that it be protected above almost every other building in London.When I arrived at St. Paul’s, a wedding had just finished, and the wedding party and guests were spilling out of the cathedral.Weddings in the UK are so different than most US weddings and many of the men were wearing morning suits and toppers and lots of the gals were in fur. The entire wedding party gathered on the front steps of the church, competing for space with the Occupy people, and had their picture taken, both by their photographer and by tourists like me!

The church is massive and you get that impression beginning with the huge columns in front,and this great black and white marble floor.

Luckily, when I was visiting, the light was great and so I got a lot of interesting images, like this statue,

the light on these organ pipes,and the light coming through the very top of the dome.

I am a huge fan of the choirs in the UK and was delighted to get this “behind the scenes” shot of the lights that illuminate the music that the choristers sing as well as the beautiful carvings on the benches.The church is filled with amazing carvings both in stone and wood. I was particularly taken by this fish-scale pattern,

which has then been gilded. It’s just beautiful, isn’t it?

After touring the inside of the cathedral, but unfortunately, not the dome or the Whispering Gallery due to time, I headed outside to see the details there.

Practically every inch of this building has some sort of decorative element and they all come together to make a stunningly and classically beautiful building. I think this is actually the view that was used in Mary Poppins because of the curved portico.

As you can see, spring is just arriving in London, even though we did see a bit of snow when we were with friends on Surrey on Sunday. I think that this might be a bot of cherry blossom that’s out early!

There were even loads of yellow, orange and white primroses outside of the church and they smelled marvelous!

One of my favourite things about a city like London is the juxtaposition of the old and the new, as seen here by the Swiss Re building, also known as the Gherkin and an old church tower.

On Tuesday, I head down to my old school with fellow blogger, Yonks, her husband, and my former housemate, Andy, in tow. I am really excited about being back there, so stay tuned!