Three Zissises In London (Part Five: St Paul's)

So rolling on down to the last full day, where the parentals and I decided (for reasons passing understanding) to climb St Paul's Cathedral. Sure, we had a look inside first, at all the lovely memorials and gravesites and the truly stunning spectacle that is the cathedral itself.
During the Blitz all (ok, much) effort was put into preserving St Paul's. While the bombs managed to miss this gigantic target, the danger came instead from fires started in its vicinity. There are several memorials, therefore, to the firefighters who risked their lives during the raids to protect the cathedral, which became a symbol of hope to many.

In the end, however, there were stairs to be climbed. Lots of them. 259 of them will take you to the Whispering Gallery, where hopeful and ultimately gullible tourists try to whisper to each other across the massive dome, after being assured that if you whisper into the wall on one side of the gallery, someone on the other side will be able to hear you perfectly. We whispered for several minutes to no avail, but I assume somewhere there are rooms full of giggling staff members.

Another 119 steps and a discomfortingly narrow passage later, we arrive on the Stone Gallery, which circles the outside of the dome. Here we caught our respective breaths and had a look at the view:

Just in case you don't believe we made it to the top:

Here Dad and I left Mum on a bench and braved the spiralling staircase up through the remainder of the dome and 152 steps to the Golden Gallery, which is right at the top, and has only a little narrow circle around which to push past other breathless climbers in order to look out across London. Jebus.

The walk back down is, if you're interested, infinitely worse than the walk up. This is where your legs start to shake. I am such a paragon of fitness that I had to sit down for ten minutes before I could walk like a normal person again.