Did Westminster Abbey look forward to meeting me like I looked forward to meeting it? Is that a weird question?

I can’t sleep, and it’s no wonder: I’m about to meet Westminster Abbey.

I don’t know why this is such a big deal for me. Yes, I am an historical tourist, raised outside of Philadelphia, where school field trips were routine jaunts to Valley Forge and Independence Hall. There’s something very compelling about standing in the spot where Big Things Happened, or Important People Stood, even centuries later.

And the Abbey is The Big Kahuna of Happening Big Things and Standing Important People, an understatement if there ever was one. I’ve read about it, watched events happen there on television, and have struggled to understand how it’s laid out (how do you fit Poet’s Corner into a church, even a big one?). I knew about the Cosmati Pavement, and how the monarch sits in the Coronation Chair at that floor’s very center, mere feet (pardon me: metres) away from Edward the Confessor’s tomb and promises to love, honor, and obey England.

I recite those (paraphrased) statements and still can’t explain how I Just. Had. To. See. It. Can the salmon explain why it plows upstream in ice cold water?

I bet the salmon can’t sleep the night before it heads up the Willamette, either.

I’m up early, examining the map of the Underground and think that I understand how to get there. I annoy Dad, Interrupted until he rouses and then finally we’re off, walking back to the ever-present, ubiquitous Underground station.

We’re actually sitting on a train when I realize that we can’t get there from here. I cannot articulate how I know this, any more than that salmon knows when he’s in the wrong river (though I’m thinking that the salmon gets it wrong far fewer times than I do). I just know that it’s impossible, I’ve picked the wrong station and I don’t have any way of figuring out the bewildering number of subway lines in time (what in God’s name is a Bakerloo and why is there a subway line named after it???) and I’m paralyzed. Guess wrong, and we might miss our entry time on a Saturday that has abbreviated hours already. Guess wrong and I will have to throw myself to the floor of that germ-infested train and cry.

And no, I do not believe I am being overly dramatic here. I’m talking Big Things Happening and Important People Standing here.

Faced with the prospect of a panicky crying five year old, Dad, Interrupted is decisive. We bail, and we Uber.

And we arrive.

I’m pretty sure the salmon can’t articulate how he feels when he finally arrives at wherever he’s going, and finally gets to do what he’s going to do. I know I can’t articulate how I felt, standing in line about to go in. I do know that it has nothing to do with fish. (And with that, I will abandon the salmon metaphor. Any more and it will be very, very weird.)

It’s overwhelming. Every step takes me across someone’s grave or memorial, some illegible from the passage of too many feet over too many centuries. The people who manage this place admit that they are not absolutely sure how many people are memorialized or entombed here, and I can see why. Imagine an attic. Not a normal attic, certainly not your attic, because it’s 32,000 square feet and it’s packed with stuff, the way attics are. Except that THIS attic is carved from stone and floored with black and white tile and all the ‘stuff’ is statuary and relics and tombs and Lord-only-knows what else. You can’t swing a dead docent without hitting something important, historical, and meaningful.

At one point in the tour we find ourselves standing in front of the altar. Because I have read about this like a fiend, I know that I am standing inches away from the Cosmati Pavement. I will not be allowed to stand on this floor, because that’s not for mere mortals like me. No, the mosaic of this floor is meant to represent the universe, and when they crown the monarch, they plant that Coronation Chair right smack in the middle of that floor (because the monarch is the center of the universe) and crown ‘em. In the important, historical, and meaningful way, of course.

I won’t be allowed to stand on that floor, but where I’m standing right that minute is where thirty-eight monarchs have stood as they prepared to climb those steps to sit in the Coronation Chair. Henry VIII, Elizabeths I & II, Victoria. Me, the Big Fan of Being Where Important Things Happened and Important People Have Stood, is feeling a little faint.

We pay extra to tour the Queen’s Jubilee Galleries, which is housed upstairs in the galleries overlooking the Abbey. This is well worth it: we see such sights as the copy of the Coronation Chair that was used in the only coronation doubleheader (William III and Mary II, if you’re keeping score at home), the only time that two real monarchs with their own individual claims to the throne, were crowned. We see copies of some of the Crown Jewels (the real ones will come the next day, when we tour the Tower of London), and we can then look down the 52 feet to the Abbey floor and see what’s behind that altar: the tomb of Edward the Confessor. We can’t enter the shrine where the tomb sits. We’re told that it’s because the floor is way too delicate, but I suspect they might not want people who would refer to a Coronation as a ‘doubleheader’ tromping around the guy who was a monarch and a saint, a heady combination indeed.

We head back downstairs to see the rest of this insanely beautiful building. We see the Lady Chapel, Poet’s Corner…we see it all.

I’m still faint, and I realize that, on top of being overwhelmed by history, I’m probably hungry. So we head to the Cellarium, the café on the grounds. This my first real encounter with British food, and I’m wary, and then pleasantly surprised. The salmon is wonderful, and we split a Millionaire’s Shortbread.

My judgmental little smartwatch has informed me I’m way past 6,000 steps, and it’s hardly 1 pm. Dad, Interrupted and I stop to consider our options outside the Abbey and he is intrigued by the Jewel Tower. It stands across from Parliament and sits alone and small and pretty much unnoticed in the throng of tourists, distracted as they are by the relatively gaudy delights of the iconic buildings in Westminster.

Parliamentary, my dear Watson.

It is in the Jewel Tower that we see a pattern develop: we tour an historic site, and Dad, Interrupted engages with the docents. He has read up on this, remember, ‘this’ being wherever we are standing, and he has questions. Lots of questions, to the point where after about a half hour I’m tugging on his sleeve, reminding him that these poor people have duties to attend to, at which point the docents insist that satisfying DI’s insatiable curiosity IS their job, and generally no one escapes until someone has to go to the john. Or loo, if you’re the docent.

So, James, whom I think was the supervisor of the Jewel Tower staff: I salute you. You’ll never get that hour back, but Dad, Interrupted remembers you as a highlight of the trip.

Liberated from the Jewel Tower, we decide to walk to Ben Franklin’s House, the only home he lived in that still stands today. One more docent, this time a history student earning money on his weekends, stunned into silence by Dad, Interrupted’s sheer volume of interest and curiosity. The paint color in Ben’s rented rooms is now an actual color you can buy: Franklin Green. We debate using it ourselves.

Jury is still out on that one.

We stop for a drink at the Ship & Shovell. I don’t drink the stouts that DI favors, so I start hitting ciders.

And then we make one of those “I’m not tired, and it doesn’t look far on the map” mistakes: we decide to walk back to the flat. Our route will take us past Buckingham Palace and through Hyde Park, so we begin our stroll.

Spoiler Alert: I didn’t meet Prince Harry at any point in this trip.

And it’s a lovely stroll, but my smartwatch hasn’t volunteered any more step count information and we have severely underestimated the amount of walking we’ve already done. St. James Park is beautiful, and Buckingham Palace is iconic. Hyde Park is bigger than it looks on Google Maps, and I’m starting to fail.

Somehow we make it. It really wasn’t that far, just two more miles in a day where we had already walked seven. But there was so much to see on the way, and the traffic, like everything else in this town, is overwhelming. (They put helpful reminders at every corner and crosswalk, telling you to Look Left or Look Right for oncoming traffic, which is blazing past you at insane speeds on the wrong side of the road. They do this to reduce the number of tourists who will get smeared across the pavement by forgetting where they are, and how people drive where they are.)

My feet don’t hurt. Really.

We stumble into the other local restaurant near our flat, a friendly pub called the Monkey Puzzle. I’m pretty sure I get the fish and chips, but more on that later.

© E. Stocking Evans 2018