Saint Paul’s

CHAPTER 4

Ten years ago I was in London on the tail end of a summer backpacking trip through Europe with four blokes that I have still not managed to shake off.  Whether it was due to our short time in town- only a few days- or because we were skimming along on the very dregs of our bank accounts after three months of traveling, or simply because we were immature 19 year olds… for some reason we walked right up to Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, took a comical photo on the front steps (not even a group photo??), and then kept walking, right on by, without a second thought.  If my memory serves me, we actually walked right by, happened to see one of those iconic red telephone booths, and proceeded to pile in and try for the classic “5 big dudes in a small telephone booth” photo.  I don’t think it turned out.

This time would be different.  With a few more years of wisdom, and respect for culture and history under my belt, Kacey and I walked right up to Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, forwent the comical photo, and proceeded inside.  And how glad am I that we did.  Inside it is a pretty impressive cathedral as far as cathedrals go, and has a lot of interesting historical quirks to it, like how it somehow managed to escape the Nazi blitzkrieg without a scratch, while surrounding buildings on all sides were getting reduced to rubble, bomb by bomb. But, the best thing about St. Paul’s, and the reason why I was so delighted to have finally stepped through its mammoth doors, was the view of London afforded from the top of the cathedral’s dome. 

London is not a tall city, in the sense that New York or Hong Kong are tall cities- so the view from the modest height of St. Paul’s was in a word, amazing.  We could see the whole city, and then some. 

We actually happened to look down, and see our friend Jackie waving to us from the plaza far below.  Admittedly we had planned to meet her there for lunch, but even so, it was a good surprise to pick her out of all the little ants crawling along the side walk.  After we had our fill of the view, we descended the spiral stairs and joined up with Jackie, and later Jake, for a delicious lunch of game sausage and grilled halloumi hoagies at the famous Borough Market.

For all you pubescent 19 year olds out there muddling your way blindly through Europe: go to Saint Paul’s, so you don’t regret it for the next ten years.  And then have lunch at Borough Market- you won’t regret that either.