Westminster Abbey!

For History of London we went to Westminster Abbey and our professor acted as a tour guide. It turns out he trains tour guides in some of the history and stuff, and he wore the little blue pin which means he's certified to tour us around. He's very knowledgeable. I'd like to adopt him and bring him back, but I think if I took him out of his natural element (explaining London history to us) some of the magic might be gone. Anyway.
I love love love Westminster Abbey. We got to see the oldest official portrait of an English monarch, which was a portrait of Richard II, from the late 1300s, which was done on wooden boards and showed how he kept up with French fashion. I believe this was mainly due to his shoes, which were pointy. The entire background was gold, and I don't know if it was gold leaf or special paint or what, but it was very flashy.
We saw the marker for the unknown warrior, and he explained a bit more of the history behind that, since England was one of the first countries to do that. In WWI you wouldn't do anything with dead bodies, and they'd just sit in trenches and the opposing side would keep lodging shells at you, and eventually the bodies got blown to bits and mixed with the mud and everything. There are apparently an inordinate amount of bone fragments in France, with no identification, and sometimes the only indication that a person even existed would be a pair of dog tags. But a lot of people wanted to have something to fix their grief on - without a body or funeral or proper gravestone, it can be difficult. So the tomb of the unknown warrior is in Westminster Abbey with plastic poppies all around it.
After that bit we went to Radical's Corner, which isn't necessarily for radicals as much as members of the Labour party. Professor Makey said it was people who went against the grain of thought in their time.
We saw the science area, with Herschel, a giant gold monument for Newton, and a grave for Darwin. One of the Anglican bishops at the time explicitly asked for Darwin to have a marker in the Abbey, to show that his theories did not conflict with the Church and its teachings. I thought that was pretty darn nice of him.
We saw where the coronations take place, which was being retiled at the time. There's a very ornate mosaic which had been covered up with a rug, and now they're fixing it.
We saw the largest monument in the place, which was dedicated to the Lord Chamberlain during Elizabeth I and Shakespeare's time. I believe he was actually the patron of Shakespeare and Burbage's company (the Lord Chamberlain's men).
We saw the tombs of a bunch of kings. The most notable (I thought) was the tomb of Edward the Confessor, the last recognized Anglo-Saxon king. He was pious and pretty much everyone liked him, and he was he one who put the plans for Westminster Abbey in motion. It was finished a week before he died, and he was brought in to see it, and was buried there. He was so popular and so pious that people petitioned the Pope to make him a saint, which he did. Once Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, he really didn't know what to do with Edward the Confessor - on one hand, a Catholic saint who was much beloved by the people and could be a focus of Catholicism - but also one of Henry's predecessors. You can't really go around bashing down monuments to other kings if you claim divine right. He left Edward alone, but under Edward VI (Henry's son) people went through the Abbey smashing the heads off statues of saints, and they dug up Edward the Confessor and scattered his bones. Bummer. Bloody Mary collected them and put them back, and Elizabeth got people to leave him alone. We couldn't get close because both it and the surrounding tombs are so old.
We saw Henry VII's chapel, which I didn't think was that great except for the ceiling. It has this magnificent fan pattern, and they have a mirror set up so you can look at it without hurting your neck.
We saw the Poet's Corner, complete with Chaucer's tomb, plaques to non-English people, and a memorial for Handel, for some reason. (The musicians' area was on the other side of the abbey). We also saw a window dedicated to gay poets. "They're all gay, is what that means" is how our professor put it. It had Wilde, Marlowe, I think Pope, and some other people I didn't recognize.
And then we got kicked out because they were starting service.
Tomorrow we're heading to Oxford. I'm hoping to see the Iffley sports center, where Roger Bannister first broke the 4 minute mile - mainly because I think Dad will think it's cool. Plus I'd like to visit the university and see the Anglo-Saxon program. That's where J.R.R. Tolkien was an Anglo-Saxon Studies professor. That'd be sweet.