Today we went to Westminster Abbey! It was really great. Our friends Grace and her sisters all came with us. The abbey was absolutely huge, and it was in Gothic architecture style, which was amazing. In the past, it was used for crowning kings and queens of England, most of which were crowned on Christmas Day. Once inside, we were given some booklet trails to play with in the abbey. Grace and I both had the same Shakespeare one, but the others had completely different ones. In our Shakespeare trails, Grace and I had to find the statues of all the different play writers (found in the beautiful Poet’s Corner) including Shakespeare himself. Most of the statues had the grave underneath, but William was buried somewhere else. We also had to find the grave of Ben Jonson, who was the only person in the abbey buried actually standing up. That was confusing! He was sort of slotted into the bottom of the wall – we made up jokes about how he was buried lying down, and then kicked into the wall sideways! I’m pretty sure, though, that wasn’t the actual method of burying upright people! Still, it was interesting to read how the burial ceremonies would have worked in our trails.
Westminster Abbey was and still is a famous place. The royal family can get married in there – William and Kate did. It’s really beautiful, and everything’s Gothic and pretty. There were loads of delicate, golden tombs, some with red and gold plaques on them, tiny ones. It was strange because on one of the tombs with these tiny gold plaques on the bottom half were all gone! Annie had a question on why they were like that, in her trail, and it said that in the olden days they didn’t have badges and scarves for souvenirs… so they just picked off a golden and red plaque – no wonder the non-reachable ones were left at the top! I believe that was Henry III’s tomb, though I may be wrong.
By the end of the morning, at about one thirty, we all trooped out of the abbey starving! Millions of pictures of tasty lunches – quinoa sandwiches, or couscous and raisins – were streaming through everybody’s minds! Soon we found a Pret a Manger or whatever it’s called (trusty Google Maps!) and we bought some delicious wraps and sandwiches. We all had a picnic on the lawn. Unfortunately Grace, Eve, and Annie had a dance class to get to when they got home, so they left within an hour or so after lunch. We stayed for half an hour or so more, befriending money spiders and making them pretty feather houses. Unfortunately, Spidy I, Spidy II, Spidy III, Spidy IV, Spidy V, and Spidy VI all fell out of their houses which were positioned on the wall of the abbey and either got lost or died. Poor Spidy I, II, III, IV – I should probably leave it off now! Goodbye, and see you soon!
