Underneath London

This past Sunday, Callum and I decided to visit Fleet Street--or rather, I wanted to visit Fleet Street and I took Callum with me. :) 

Fleet used to be a river, until the city kept growing and eventually paved over it so that now it runs underground and can't be seen.  Instead, there is Fleet Street--which use to be the home of the biggest, best, and richest publishing and newspaper companies.  Being an English major, I naturally wanted to go check it out, even if there aren't any publishers there anymore.  We had to walk by the financial district, which Callum enjoyed because he's studying economics.  As we got closer, the building became more and more office-y and really tall.  As we were walking, I saw a little mews that had a really pretty archway and lamp, so we went over to investigate.  Turns out, it was the entrance to St. Bride's church.  I wanted to explore, so we went in.  It was a gorgeous church, with stained class windows and a really elaborate steeple, which the sign outside claimed to have inspired the tier-shaped wedding cake.  That sign also said there was a crypt underneath it.  Maybe its my love of secret passageways, but I REALLY wanted to go see that.  We go explore for free, so down we went!  And lo and behold, one of the coolest crypts (and so far the ONLY crypt) that I've ever seen.  It used to be where the parishoners and notorious people were buried.  They had part of it set up like a museum and it was really informative.  Apparently St. Bride's wasn't always just a church, it use to be where the original and first printing press in England operated from and continued to be in the epicenter of the publishing sector on fleet street until the business started moving away in 1980s with the advent of computers.  This crypt also happened to lie on a foundation built by the Romans when they owned the land long before England existed as it does today.  They discovered this when they were renovating the church.  Under the crype is authentic Roman pavement--bricks laid down by the Romans.  It was amazing!  The U.S. has some cool sites, but just plain doesn't have any that old!  It was really neat to stand there where Romans used to walk and publishing tycoons used to worship.  And we hadn't even really planned to tour anywhere or even knew that St. Bride's existed.  It was a really nice surprise and I learned a lot about the publishing industry in London--yea for educational adventures! :)

Since then, I've just been working on wrapping up the school year so I can enjoy the rest of my time in London.  My classes and internship end in 2 weeks and I'm using the first week of spring break to write my two final papers.  Then I'll be filling my time with non-obligatory things like enjoying London, visit Norwich with Callum, hosting Emily Lambrix and Niki Green in May, and spending time with my flatmates.  I leave London and return to Michigan on June 18th--though I technically have my flat until the 25th, my summer job begins on the 20th and I need to be back for that.  So all-in-all, I have a lovely 2 month-ish chunk of time to enjoy and relax in and I can't wait until that time is here! :)