Outnumbered & Abroad; The Abbey (Part 7)

Westminster Abbey (Wednesday, September 27, 2018) - After leaving the palace, we went on a stroll on the hunt for Westminster neighborhood. Along the way, we found a quaint little cafe not unlike a more specialized Subway or Jimmy John’s back home, that had the local business professionals flying in and out. I took that as a good sign for the quality and price of the food within, seeing as how our first day in London culinary finds had left us depressed outside of one American Domino’s pizza.

Once again, we were left wanting when it came to the food. I did notice, for the first time, that the pure raw juice fad was showing up BIG in the United Kingdom. So many options for real, pressed juice from a variety of different plants and vegetables. My juice really wasn’t horrible, but Warren Clayton looked a little bit queasy after he had his. I guess the ginger was extra strong! Being such big fans of Kombucha, I thought that maybe they’d be more apt towards those different flavor palates.

I had never seen so many brick buildings in all my life! These flowers beautified the whole urban setting so amazingly!

We continued our walk around town to what we thought would be Westminster Abbey. On the walk, I became acutely aware of a black sedan that wasn’t passing us. Instead, breaking the trend of crazy, horrible London drivers that had numerously tired to kill me when I had accidentally looked the American direction (wrong in the UK) before crossing a street, by slowly creeping behind us. Stopping when we did, moving forward with us as well.

It was in our “blind spot” but I have beyond average peripheral vision. I glanced at Warren Clayton with a concerned look,

“What?” He said.

I matched my step to his so that we were step-for-step. I said, with a side-eye glance at the sedan, “I think we are being followed.”

“Ya, I noticed that,” he said quickly.

He hadn’t. That I was sure of. The poor kid has this thing about him that he is “The Bodyguard,” an image pressed upon him from his family and, especially, his mom. The only issue is that, to be a bodyguard, he would have to be aware and be ten steps ahead of the game. He is not. Only because he’s young! He just recently graduated high school, he can’t drink, hasn’t seen college bar night life, and while he has seen a lot and is an absolute resource in the plains and in surviving, this urban city life is very outside of his element. There is a lot going on. I’m not saying I am perfect, but I do know that I can be, and usually am, always bring on all pistols at the top of my game in new situations.

I couldn’t help but be both relieved when the car finally sped past us, the driving talking furiously into a phone, and annoyed by everyone' else’s lack of attention.

After a quick pit stop in an alley that we had thought was Westminster Alley, we found the Westminster cathedral. We decided to pop into this wonderfully beautiful Catholic Church. I could immediately tell that it was the Johnson’s first time walking into a powerful place of worship like that before. I know the feeling that Randi, especially, had struck across her face. It is a similar feeling to how I had felt the first time that I went into the painted church in Hawaii. It’s also a feeling I felt when I went to the large Mormon churches in Utah during Christmas time with my basketball team in college.

We didn't loiter long in the church, heading out when they started their Wednesday noon service. Not being a Catholic, I felt that it would have been disrespectful for us to just “hang out” and sight see in their church while they were actively using it.

We then found the actual Westminster Abbey from the outside, deciding against goin in. The tickets were pretty pricey and I could tell that that bothered Randi.

“I don’t mind buying a ticket to a theater or the palace,” she said, “but monetizing the church just feels wrong and I don’t want to support it.”

Both myself and my bank account agreed with her sentiment. I couldn’t help but feel some curiosity, however, after Randi gave me her best explanation that she could of how it was famous people’s funeral spots, burial sites, and the home to the nuns that practice there. I don’t know much about nuns and monks, nor necessarily what all they do in their line of work. I feel like it is most definitely something that I should know and should probably have been taught in school. What I do know is that they give themselves wholly and completely to God.

Continuing our walk around London, completing our third amazing race card, we semi-saw Big Ben. The poor dude was under construction on the entire bottom half of the tower meaning that all three of us had walked straight by it, partially blinded by the sight of the London Eye, without realizing we had absolutely bypassed this historic clock masterpiece.

Randi wanted to go on the London Eye very bad. Nicole was determined not too and I feel like Warren Clayton and I were stuck somewhere in the middle. I had thought that the London Eye was going to be like their version of the Space Needle, all seeing above the city. While it is high above the city, not unlike the Space Needle of Seattle, it is quite simply a high-powered ferris wheel just like they ones in both Seattle and Vegas. The line was extremely long and I felt like it wasn’t worth neither the time, nor money, to go on it. I am sad to say that I think my rationalization disappointed Randi.

This military helicopter flying this close to the London Eye absolutely blew my mind and I had to stand, watching with my camera poised, not sure what I was going to catch, on the bridge that split the difference between Big Ben and the London Eye.