Day 4 - London

Today I took my first day trip to London. It was a 30 minute walk to the Reading train station, then a 25 minute ride to Paddington Station in London. My first destination was the British Library to see the early Bible manuscripts. The Circle Line was closed because of the bombings, so I had to stop at Baker Street and walk from there, which was kinda nice. The weather was perfect.. partly cloudy and about 68 degrees.




Wow. The gallery at the British Library was amazing!! They had original copies of the Tyndale bible and Wycliffe bible. But the main attractions were on the other side. They had the Egerton Gospel fragment!! If that doesn't sound like anything to be excitited about, I'll explain what it is. It's a piece of an unknown gospel written around 100AD. Unlike the later gnostic gospels, it does not contain any heresies or sensationalism. It's actually quite similar to the gospel of John. I have read about this fragment for a couple years now, and wasn't even expecting to see it there, so it was a great surprise. Right next to that was the Codex Sinaiticus! It is a complete bible, written during the 4th century. It's one of the most important manuscripts of any kind. It helped in the translation of almost every Bibles available today. They also had original writings (in ink, from their own hands) of DaVinci, Shakespeare, Beethoven, and many other well-known people. Wow!

After that, I explored London a little, and eventually made it down to the "posh" shopping areas in Kensington & Knightsbridge. I spent some time in the world-famous Harrods and Harvey Nichols, where a lot of celebrities (including many from the U.S.) are known to shop. One interesting observation: a few of the more upper-class people in Kensington & Chelsea seemed to talk (or try to talk) with a more American accent. Their "r"s were like ours, but the other letters were mostly like English. But it may have just been a few individuals who are from America or spent a lot of time there. Later in an underground train, I heard someone talking about wanting to get into acting, someone else told him he should take speech classes to learn an American accent. I thought that was interesting too. Most of the American accents they hear here are by people in movies or relatively rich tourists, so maybe it is a sign of wealth. I'm not sure. I'll ask around.

Of course, after that I went looking for the poorest/most dangerous parts of London -- the Hackney and Tower Hamlets area in east London. They really didn't seem that bad, but I didn't go very far away from the tube stops. I can see how some parts could be pretty bad though.

After a little more exploring on the south bank of the Thames and the big touristy areas (Tower Bridge, London Eye, Big Ben, etc.) I went back home to Reading. When I arrived, at 11:30pm, the place was so alive -- nothing like Norman at 11:30pm. Of course, this was a saturday night when everyone was out at the pubs. And parts of the Reading town centre seem to be nothing but pubs & clubs up and down the streets. It was quite an interesting walk through there.

Tomorrow I'm planning to attend the nearby Tyndale Baptist Church. I've never been to a church service outside the U.S., so it will be interesting. For the next Sunday I'll probably visit Christ Church (Church of England), which also is quite close to where I live.

posted by Matt @ 12:24 AM