Saturday Wanderings, Part One

This morning, after another frustrated attempt to open a bank account in England (another story for another day), Bishop Sunshine Gibbons and I decided we would take a stroll around London. When I've been here as a tourist or leading students, we take the tube because we're usually crunched for time. The result is that I'm super familiar with London's public transportation system, but have really no idea how the different areas of London fit together.

Sunny told me this morning that he really wanted to see the spot from Mary Poppins where the little old bird woman comes to "Feed the Birds." Tuppence a bag. Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag. (Are you singing with me now?) So I set off to St. Paul's, singing show tunes, and taking charming, British-y pictures along the way. The closer I got to the cathedral, however, the more police I saw. When I arrived, I found myself in the middle of the London branch of the now-global Occupy Movement. The protesters had already gathered and the police were just converging. Sunny and I realized pretty quickly that we weren't going to get our picture with the steps today, so we thought about seeing the inside of the cathedral. As I started to weave my way through the protesters on the steps, I glanced behind me. The police had cordoned off the area and weren't letting anyone in or out, nor were they letting any traffic through on the roads around the square. While I had planned on spending the afternoon in and around St. Paul's, suddenly it seemed like a better idea to try to get out of there. I pulled out my camera and my most American sounding accent and batted my eyes at the nearest policeman who let me through after a minute or so. I did hang around a little longer to see if anything developed (behind police lines), but the police started letting people leave if they wished and not much happened. This BBC News version is pretty much what I saw happen.

This was an unexpectedly exciting start to our day, but we continued on to other nearby destinations.

Sunny still really likes St. Paul's. He'll feed the birds next time.

If you want to see more of my pictures, check out the London album on Facebook. (Ann Celeste Johnson) I've made it public.


Update:  (Oct 26) When I walked into Occupy London, it was at the very beginning of their occupation of St. Paul Cathedral Square. There was no true "occupation" yet. That has changed in the last couple of weeks, as this clip from NBC's Today Show demonstrates.