The Former Port of London building caught our eye before we fully realized that it was part of our walk. Father Thames with his trident was super cool to see and we all stood in awe as we tried to figure out the easiest way there is to putting together a building like this one. The design on the building was so perfect that you could easily notice the perfect symmetry of every detail.
St. Olaves church was silent inside. As we entered a woman was leaving, so that left us four as the only people in the building. No one else was inside and the silence had kind of an eerie feel to it. When we read that people such as Samuel Pepys are buried in this church we tried to be even more careful and quiet. Also reading that this was Dickens' most beloved church gave me an added respect for the building and I tried to imagine Charles Dickens roaming this small church looking for inspiration. Though the skulls on the gate were a little intimidating and I was a little concerned about entering an empty church, I enjoyed this part of the walk very much.
My absolute favorite part of this walk was Christ's Church. Although it was nothing close to a beautiful LDS temple, I was impressed with it and luckily for us it has been fully restored recently and is super nice inside and outside. The greatest part about it was the beautiful stained glass windows! I feel that the coloring on these windows was so much more vivid than any of the others we have seen. We were inside at the perfect time of the day so the sun was perfectly hitting the window. We sat inside for quite a while just absorbing all the details and colors we could.
The Spitafield market was next on the list and I found it a little bit underwhelming. There were quite a few booths and all surrounded by many stored but nothing seemed to be very special. Most things were very knick knacky, but there was one station that caught my eye. Big quilt blankets that are all one of a kind. Most of them are pretty unorganized and a little bizarre but are still the coolest blankets ever. I loved one in particular but as I looked closer at it, it had many different black marks and foot prints on it like it had been used so I decided to let it stay at the kiosk with the others.
By this point we were getting pretty tired and we considered finishing the other half of the walk another day. But we decide to go to the Broadgate Venus and we all found it pretty funny. From the backside we assumed it was a giant baby laying on its side. As we came around to the front we realized it was just an enormous woman semi-covered in robes. We played around near it and sat to take a break and chose to finish the walk before heading back for dinner.
The rest of the walk went by pretty quickly because we did not enter the Museum of London. The last stop was also a favorite of the day. The postman's park looked like your average pretty London park. But after reading some of the tombstones this park became something so fascinating. Some of the tombstones shared the sweetest stories. A woman who saved children from a fire, a man who saved a woman from comitting suicide, another woman who gave up her life belt to someone else and went down with the sinking ship and many more incredible stories.
Although this was not my all time favorite walk so far, I enjoyed the sentimentality of the churches and the postman's park as well as learning about the London wall and its historical background.
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| Former Port of London Building |
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| St. Olave's Church |
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| Christ's Church |
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| Christ's Church |
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