Next Time I'm in Church, Please No Photos

I'd brought my Nikon D3000 all the way to Europe with the intention of being an absolute Asian tourist and taking pictures of everything and anything. For the most part, I've been fulfilling this goal everywhere I go. Germany in particular is quite smart about it sometimes: in certain palaces, I've had to pay to for a paparazzi permit, and if everyone is paying 3 additional euros for that privilege, that's quite the flow of money.

England could definitely stand to learn something from this. Imagine my surprise when I arrived at Westminster Abbey, took out my camera to take a picture of the amazing vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows, and was promptly told that no photography was allowed.

The OUTSIDE of Westminster Abbey. Jerks

What did you just say?!

I wanted to grab the volunteer by her shoulders, shake her really hard, and tell her that I do what I want. Blehh. Instead, after she shot me a glare for gaping at her in shock, I put my camera away like a good little girl and waited for the tour.

If there's anything about England I appreciate aside from tea at breakfast, it's the dry humor the people are constantly doling out. I'm usually not a big fan of history lectures, but when the tour guide puts everything in terms of one-upping the previous monarch, I'm all for hearing the stories. Westminster Abbey was first built by King Edward the Confessor, so named because he confessed his Christian faith (getting creative here, huh?). Part of his intention of building the abbey was so that he would have a place to be buried when he died, which was unfortunately just a few days after the building was completed. After his death, William from Normandy came to steal the throne by killing his successor at the Battle of Hastings. As a show of his superiority, William I was crowned right smack on top of Edward's grave. Which led to the current tradition of holding coronation ceremonies in Westminster Abbey...right where Edward was originally buried, haha.

As the fame of Westminster Abbey grew, more and more people wanted to be interred there, which led to its eventual expansion. Kings got pissed that there was no more space left underground for their own burials or any space above ground for monuments/memorials to themselves, so they started building their own wings. Others thought they were too good for Westminster and asked to be buried near Windsor Castle instead. Or, as Churchill said when he refused to be buried at the abbey, "I've let people step on me all during life, I don't want to give them a chance to do that in death." This led to the huge building you see today--even now, they still don't have enough space for all the different, which is why they've started painting in names on stained glass windows to honor the dead.

And in the case of Oliver Cromwell, after turning England into a Republic and having been buried for three years at Westminster, the next king exhumed his body (I can only imagine what state it would have been in...), put it on trial for treason, had it cut into tiny bits, and threw the parts into the river. The head remained on a stake until a storm blew it away. I won't be forgetting his name anytime soon.