Sir Christopher Wren's St. Paul's

London's Great Fire of 1666 burnt down nearly 80% of London city. Among which was the old St. Paul's Cathedral. This gave a chance to Sir Christopher Wren to rebuild numerous public building, including St. Paul's and fifty other churches. This cathedral was inspired by St Peter's Basilica in Rome. The dome is second only to St Peter's in the world.

Have it been opened on Sundays for the public, it would have been among the first few sites for us to visit. But alas it was only on our second day that we have the chance to enter this magnificent cathedral.

After climbing up the winding staircase we reached the Whispering Gallery. The acoustics of the gallery was so well accomplished that when one person sat on one side and whispered to the wall, the other sitting on the opposite was able to hear the whisper. We thought it must have been some gimmick for attracting tourists, but after seeing how one couple did it, we tried, and amazingly it really is true. A search online shows that this can be accomplished with any gallery with a dome structure and can be found in other domed structures as well.

After the Whispering Gallery, we climbed up even higher and came up at the top of the dome, on a viewing balcony where we were presented with this magnificent view. If you look close enough, you can see the London Eye in the middle of the photo.

This is the Great West Door with the clock tower. This was where the entrance to the Cathedral was located. The pigeon was a pleasant surprise to me as well, as I didn't expect it to pass my frame. I noticed it only after the photo was downloaded to my laptop.

This view can only be seen from the river, on board a Thames river cruise, while we were passing the Millennium Bridge. This bridge was also known as the Wobbly Bridge, due to the fact that when it first opened to the public, the bridge started swaying sideways due to the passing crowd. The bridge was closed and modified to eliminate that.