Easter Weekend - St Paul's & Little Venice

Seeing as how it is Easter weekend and all, i decided this morning to attend the easter morning "special service" at st paul's cathedral. now i'm not anglican or anything but i thought it might be kinda special to attend an easter mass in st paul's cathedral while i am in london, and the website promised that the 11.30am "Sung Eucharist" session was "a musical and visual feast to celebrate the resurrection". The Bishop of London was presiding, and the Cathedral Choir was going to sing Coronation Mass by Mozart. sounded good. so off i went.

by the time i got there slightly past 11am, the place was already swarming with people...mostly tourists also there i suspect for the same reason i was.



i'd never been inside st paul's cathedral before this. i've walked past many times, but never gone in. it was always kinda en route to somewhere else i had to be....sadly though, isn't that what religion represents for many of us...





the interior of st paul's is pretty impressive. for starters it's very well maintained and it has a quiet dignity about it - neither too ostentatious nor shabby, i felt it was about right. i can't comment on the service itself because i'm no expert, but i definitely enjoyed the experience of being there with everyone else on easter morning. it was kind of uplifting. :)

the one thing that annoyed me, however, was the swarms of RUDE tourists who were there. some of them were blatantly disrespectful - didn't bother removing their sunshades, loudly flipping their tourist books during hymns and prayers, not rising when required to, etc. i mean, u don't have to belong to any particular religious denomination to know that you should at least show some basic respect in these circumstances innit??

well anyway, i'm glad i went. it was definitely a meaningful experience...

LITTLE VENICE

yesterday was a different kettle of fish altogether. me and WN decided that since we were probably the only people who decided to stay in london for easter weekend, we would go check out Little Venice. It's within a very short walking distance from Warwick Avenue tube station, and truth be told, it's rather small and disappointing lah. though we did manage to see some GEESE (not ducks)! they're very cute, but also very loud....



it's actually quite nice in spring, when the weather is still cool enough out so you don't smell the longkang, and the sun is shining brightly enough for you to enjoy a nice walk by the canal. there are even boat cafes along the stretch where people hang out...



what's cool about it is that people live there like regular folks. they have little roads with names, dogs running about playing ball, people hanging out with a pint of beer....damn relak. do people who live by water become relak, or are they relak to begin with hence attracted to this type of life? hmmm....



well anyway it's almost the end of easter weekend already. 6 more weeks to go before my next holiday in the REAL venice...