Mind the Gap: FOR JESS: From the Bank to the Temple: Legal London

These walks man... they start to blur. But here's a fun thing I learned on this walk! - great minds think alike and BYU students have great minds. So picture this. We're doing our walk and we're beginning to feel pretty hungry, so we just

BYU students who walked
in on our meal

walk down the street to find a place that looks yummy (one of my favorite things that we do in London). So we find this place called Barburrito and our group goes inside. Now we're in the middle of London in the middle of the day randomly choosing a random store. Ten minutes later another group of BYU students walk in having seen the store and deciding it looked delicious. We are in a very large city filled with food places and we BYU students all flock to the same one. This is why we all get along.

the Fat Boy

Okay but in all seriousness I did notice some other things. The London fire definitely is commemorated here. One of our other walks talks a lot about the London fire, so I shouldn't have been so surprised to see another small token on the opposite side of the city. There's this little statue that they literally call the Fat Boy and he's there representing gluttony. So apparently people believed that the fire occurred because god was punishing the people. It's really interesting to see how much religion has really influenced history. People may have different beliefs or argue over god or any number of things, but clearly religion is one of the most important things in the world.

St. Lauren's Jewry

Fun fact: the London Fire supposedly started at Pudding Lane and stopped at Cock Lane which used to be called Pye street, hence Georgie Porgie, puddin' and pie." Whaa-?! Who knew so many of our traditional nursery songs were actually slightly disturbing?!

I liked this church because it felt a little more modern. Apparently it's actually been around for quite a few years and was bombed during the London bombings, but since it had to be restored it definitely feels more recent. I actually liked the change of scenery since we have been doing nothing but ancient ruins. It's a nice shake up and proof that anything Brits want to do they can accomplish well. It's also really typical London that they don't just demolish a ruined building and they instead restore it or "improve" it.

Side note, there are statues devoted to Commerce, Agriculture, Science, AND Fine Arts!!! I was actually really surprised that with that list of things, they would include Fine Arts. So... that's fun. I'm a Humanities major and I've been involved in the arts my whole life so I love that London is so conscious of the arts!! What a wonderful city this is.

"You are now / In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow / At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore / Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more / Yet in its depth what treasures!" - Percy Shelley