Our 3 Miracles: London Day 5: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey

U's step count for the day was about 16.000 which was 7.25 miles. He went up 74 flights of stairs!!!

Thursday morning, we ate breakfast at the hotel. It was again delicious. I do love good crumpets!

A croissant and 2 pain au chocolat.

Megan with a stack of glasses from U, Me and Megan. Matthew's stack of glasses is all his own. Initially, we had 6 glasses and he only had 5 so he went and got another glass of juice to drink. Then he did not feel so good--his stomach was sloshing quite a bit!

We headed back to the Westminster area. A couple observations about walking in London: Their crosswalks tell you which way to look (right, left or both) before crossing the road which is super handy. When crossing with a signal, you wait for the green man before walking. Unless a crowd is going and then you walk with them...

Oliver Cromwell statue

Super excited to go up in Big Ben! We had to be up at 2 am on a Wednesday in June to get the tickets. It was definitely worth it. Our tour started at 9:45 am so we were up top for the 11 am chime.

We spent some time looking around Westminster Hall before our tour. It is quite large. And old--it was built by William II, the son of William the Conqueror, and was completed in 1099 AD.

Lion and unicorn statues

Description of the wall and medieval masons' marks. Photos of a few of the marks follow.

We saw these large spiders quite a few places and Megan did not like them. She thought they were multiplying.

Stained glass of the coat of arms of the United Kingdom. It was created for Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

There were lots of motifs and decorations around the hall.

Fancy door to somewhere....

View towards the back of the hall.

Fancy lighting with statues of some of the rulers.

Close up of one of the lamps.

There were a lot of plaques on the floor from where people had stood during famous events. This one is from Nelson Mandela.

And this was where King Charles I was when he stood trial before his execution. He was not the only one to be tried in Westminster Hall before being executed.

Fancy door leading to the House of Commons. The light sculpture over the door is called "New Dawn" and represents women's suffrage.

The scrolls represent Acts which have given women the right to vote as well as people and groups involved in the women vote movement. The back lighting is tied to the tides in the Thames, with just one disc being lit at low tide and all of the discs being lit at high tide.

Such fancy doorways!

Memorial to members of Parliament who died in WWI.

Plaque with WWI Memorial

Stained glass window is a memorial to members and staff of both Houses who died during WWII.

Close up of some of the stained glass.

One of the 24 flying angels that helps supports the roof.

Me and Matthew in Westminster Hall

The tour of Big Ben was amazing! Definitely one of the highlights of our time in London. No pictures were allowed so text will have to suffice. There are about 334 stairs. One of the guys who helped design the clock mechanism, Edmund Beckett Denison, generally thought he knew better than everyone else (and he was often right). He believed the clock should be accurate to the second and it was/is. To adjust time on the pendulum, coins are used as weights. Possible Big Ben namesakes were a pugilist and a politician. The clock mechanism was really neat and was not at all what I was expecting. It had cool features like a 2 minute warning before bells would chime so people working on the clock could back away, move tools, etc. There is a gear that moves every 2 seconds and so the minute hand on the clock face moves every 2 seconds. There is a gear that gets Big Ben to chime the correct number of times--basically it reengages when it is the correct number of gongs (so small for 12 to 1, large for 11 to 12, etc). It can be disengaged to get it to gong a different number of times (like what they did for Queen Elizabeth II's funeral). There are 4 quarter bells but 5 hammers because one bell is used twice in a row and so it needs 2 hammers to play the correct rhythm. The initial bell got a crack in it so they melted it down and made another one. The new bell cracked as well but it was a small crack that did not go all the way through so they rotated the bell and used a smaller hammer. It's for this reason that the bell has a bit of a tingy sound. In 1976, part of the clock mechanism broke, creating divets in the floor. Before the clock had an electric winder, it took 2 men 5 hours to wind the clock manually every day. You can see where they stood as there are recesses in the floor from their shoes. At 6 pm and midnight everyday as well as at 10 pm on Sundays, the hour chime is live broadcast on the BBC. Our guide told us he was at the bell at 6 pm once and it was so tempting to say, "Hi mom!" during the pause between the chimes and the gong. The clock face uses "iv" for 4 (instead of the typical "iiii" used on clocks) and the "x" looks more like an "f". The lights behind the clock face are white and lime green to look like gaslight. With the recent refurb, they used Prussian blue instead of black as they discovered that had been the initial color. They also redid the gold plating that is at the top of the clock. The first time this was done and people complained about the cost of this when they could not see it, they were told that it wasn't done for them--it was for the birds and God. They had better PR this time and told them that maintenance was much cheaper since gold-plated would last 50 years while gold painted would only last 5 years.

We heard the hour chime and then Big Ben gonged 11 times. It was very cool! We also got to walk behind all the clock faces.

Online picture of the gear mechanism. It's much more horizontal than I anticipated.

So cool that we went up there!

See that Prussian blue on the clock face?

Richard the Lionhearted

Me and Megan

After lunch at Sutton Market, we went to Westminster Abbey.

Beautiful stained glass.

Lots of famous dead people are either buried or memorialized in the Abbey.

Tomb of Unknown solder from WWI.

More stained glass. We think this is a bunch of kings.

Sir Isaac Newton Memorial

Fancy ceiling!

The quire. Some commonwealths such as Canada and Australia have their own permanent places in the quire.

The High Altar and the Cosmati Pavement where coronations and royal weddings occur.

Close up of Cosmati Pavement that was laid down in 1268 under Henry III.

Close up of High Altar.

We toured Westminster Abbey where we saw a lot of memorials, tombs and burial places.

Memorial to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale who died in childbirth. Her husband is trying to push away Death.

Memorial of a man with each of his six sons around the burial place.

Mary and Jesus

Edward the Confessor's tomb

Blue porcupine at the feet of Frances Sidney, the Countess of Sussex.

Always look up! What a fancy ceiling.

Matthew near the tombs of Elizabeth I and Mary I.

Couple of memorials to the World Wars.

Oliver Cromwell is no longer buried at the Abbey....

U with tombs of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York behind him.

Mary, Queen of Scots

King Edmund III with small statues of his sons around the side of the casket.

A bunch of memorials in Poet's corner.

Shakespeare

Handel

Geoffrey Chaucer was buried at Westminster Abbey and is one of the reasons a lot of other writers, etc, wanted burial or memorial in the Abbey.

Wordsworth

Coronation chair. If you look closely, you can see the chair has been carved repeatedly with initials. This was done by schoolboys at the Abbey.

We went up to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries up top of the Abbey. No photos were allowed. It was interesting to get that perspective. We got a good view of Edward the Confessor's tomb and some of the other things we could not see so well from down below. There were some interesting displays up above including Elizabeth I's corset. Ouch!

View of Westminster Palace from the stairs up to the Jubilee Galleries.

The reversed side of stained glass.

Me on the stairs.

View into the Cloister Garth.

The oldest door in Britain.

The ceiling in the Chapter House. Built in 1250, it was initially used for daily meetings by Benedictine monks. It was later used by the King's Great Council and the Commons, predecessors of today's Parliament.