I went, are you happy now??

This is for you, Heather. ;)

Westminster Abbey is perfectly lovely if, well, a bit overdone (to me). It's extremely important historically, and I found it rather perversely funny, given how much they hated each other, that Elizabeth I and her sister Mary are interred together. Forever. Heh. Photography is prohibited but that's not made extremely clear when you first get inside, so I had already popped off a few shots before a guy in a red robe politely asked me to put the camera away. Whoops.

But before I ever made it to Westminster Abbey, I decided to take a peek around an old, ruined, overgrown cemetery in the Stoke Newington/Hackney area near where Naomi lives. I'd seen it in passing on the bus when I was in London before going to India, but didn't have time to properly investigate. I'm fond of old, strange cemeteries and from what I could tell this one looked right up my alley. When I got there today, I was not disppointed-- my god! It's HUGE. I spent about an hour poking around and probably didn't even see half of it. It's a strangely derelict place, all twisted, overgrown ivy on headstones crammed together and falling down and leaning on each other, mixed in with crumbling statues of angels and a few crosses dotted about. There's a ruined abbey in the center which provided a lovely opportunity for some atmospheric, gothy photos. The place is called Abney Park Cemetery if you'd care to google it. Most of the graves seemed to date from the mid-19th century on up to the 60's. At least, the ones that I could read dated from that time. There are also a lot of WWI graves and a memorial near the abbey for the soldiers buried there who somehow didn't merit a headstone.

After leaving Westminster Abbey I headed over to the Tate Britain museum, not to be confused with the Tate Modern. They have a lovely collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings and historical British portraits. Again, photos prohibited. Fooey. In any case, I saw the famous Waterhouse "Lady of Shallot", which is much bigger than you'd think! It's probably four feet tall by six feet wide, anyway.

Of course, such a day of non-indulgence (the £10 admission into Westminster Abbey not included) required some good, old-fashioned Soho shopping as a reward. I wandered into my absolute favorite trashy-yet-prohibitively-expensive lingerie store, Agent Provocateur, and admired many things that I had no intention of spending upwards of £150 on. Besides that, they didn't have any bras in stock that fit me anyway. Bottoms yes, but tops? Of course not. Hmph. After that I wandered around Liberty, the famous department store, and again sighed over many things I can't afford. It's a curse having such good taste, I'm telling you. I bought a few things here and there and probably blew whatever money I could have used for gas and a lift ticket at Alpental this weekend, but whatever. Oh wait, when I get back I have to sink a ton of money into my car to get the brakes fixed, so I guess snowboarding is out for the next little bit anyway.

I'm still in a very melancholy mood over leaving India and a few other things going on back home, but-- believe it or not, haha-- I'm excited about being able to see all of you when I get back.