On Tuesday I was awake early so thought I’d look for a coffee in Angel. Even Costa & Pret were closed, so the odds were not looking good. Walking down to the end of the street I found an Italian Cafe, run by Italians, so I thought I may have struck coffee gold up here in Angel. The only other customers were 5 or 6 police officers having breakfast. Unfortunately my initial excitement was misplaced as the coffee was average.
After breakfast we headed down to St Paul’s Cathedral for the tour. It was £17 per head, but considering you can climb the internal stairs for a fantastic view over London, its money well spent. We did the guided tour which took over 1.5 hours (probably 40 minutes more than what was really needed). You can’t take pictures inside the church or crypt unfortunately, as there are some marvellous pieces of architecture inside that is worth photographing. Down in the crypt are the tombs of Wellington and Nelson. Amazingly some of the flags from the battle of Waterloo are just hanging there and will do until they disintegrate over time. No attempt has or will be made to preserve them. Christopher Wren who built the cathedral as well as most of the churches in London post the great fire. The cafe for the cathedral is in the crypt also.
After coffee I climbed the 528 steps all the way to the top of the dome and the view is spectacular. It was a hot clear day. You also get an opportunity to view the internal structure as you ascend the iron spiral staircase. Not for the claustrophobic though, narrow passages, lots of people and small spiral staircases.
We then headed down to the Churchill War rooms, but the queue was massive and we had limited time before we had to get ready for the Globe Theatre, so we will do that another day. After getting ready we headed down towards the Globe and grabbed some mexican for dinner just opposite Borough Market. The play inside the Globe was Romeo and Juliet with an interesting modern bent, think Robocop meets the Village People. The seats we had were excellent with heaps of leg space. After the show we walked along the Millennium bridge on the way back to the apartment.
It's all about the coffee 