London Eye

Today we went up in the London Eye which is a like a huge ferris wheel, I guess, and either the largest in the world or close to it I would say. It overlooks Ben Ben and Westminister Abbey. Westminister Abbey dates back to about 960 or possibly to 600 Ad as Westminister Monastery. I have never seen anything like Westminister Abbey anywhere on earth. There is a way that British and London culture honors those that honor the English Culture in any way. In fact on the outside of Westminister Abbey is even a statue of Martin Luther King above the main entrance that you saw Prince William and Kate walk through to get married there. So there is for example, a reclining statue with a real death mask made at the time of Elizabeth I when she passed away during the early 1600s during the Renaissance. And her body lies beneath this reclining statue of her. In fact, Westminister Abbey is full of Kings and Royals all over the place and you really have to see this place to believe it really exists at all. So basically about 1500 years of English history lives recorded in one way or another within Westminister Abbey. It is where Kings and Queens and Royals of note are buried and recognized for as long as Westminister Abbey stands and receives vistors from both home and abroad.

Though I'm not afraid of heights my wife sometimes gets vertigo from something as high as the London Eye. If you ride it on the gondolas it appears to take you up 500 or more feet in height in total above the Thames River looking right down on the most historical sites of London.

following quote from Wikipedia under the heading  "Westminister Abbey":

History

North Entrance of Westminster Abbey

According to a tradition first reported by Sulcard in about 1080, the Abbey was first founded in the time of Mellitus (d. 624), Bishop of London, on the present site, then known as Thorn Ey (Thorn Island); based on a late tradition that a fisherman called Aldrich on the River Thames saw a vision of Saint Peter near the site. This seems to be quoted to justify the gifts of salmon from Thames fishermen that the Abbey received in later years. In the present era, the Fishmonger's Company still gives a salmon every year. The proven origins are that in the 960s or early 970s, Saint Dunstan, assisted by King Edgar, installed a community of Benedictine monks here.
Between 1042 and 1052 King Edward the Confessor began rebuilding St Peter's Abbey in order to provide himself with a royal burial church. It was the first church in England built in the Norman Romanesque style. It was not completed until around 1090 but was consecrated on 28 December 1065, only a week before the Confessor's death on 5 January 1066.^[2] The next day he was buried in the church, and nine years later his wife Edith was buried alongside him.^[3] His successor, Harold II, was probably crowned in the Abbey, although the first documented coronation is that of William the Conqueror later the same year.^[4]
The only extant depiction of Edward's abbey, together with the adjacent Palace of Westminster, is in the Bayeux Tapestry. Increased endowments supported a community increased from a dozen monks in Dunstan's original foundation, to about eighty monks.^[5] Construction of the present church was begun in 1245 by Henry III^[6] who had selected the site for his burial.

A layout plan dated 1894

The abbot and learned monks, in close proximity to the royal Palace of Westminster, the seat of government from the later twelfth century, became a powerful force in the centuries after the Norman Conquest: the abbot often was employed on royal service and in due course took his place in the House of Lords as of right. Released from the burdens of spiritual leadership, which passed to the reformed Cluniac movement after the mid-tenth century, and occupied with the administration of great landed properties, some of which lay far from Westminster, "the Benedictines achieved a remarkable degree of identification with the secular life of their times, and particularly with upper-class life", Barbara Harvey concludes, to the extent that her depiction of daily life^[7] provides a wider view of the concerns of the English gentry in the High and Late Middle Ages. The proximity of the Palace of Westminster did not extend to providing monks or abbots with high royal connections; in social origin the Benedictines of Westminster were as modest as most of the order. The abbot remained Lord of the Manor of Westminster as a town of two to three thousand persons grew around it: as a consumer and employer on a grand scale the monastery helped fuel the town economy, and relations with the town remained unusually cordial, but no enfranchising charter was issued during the Middle Ages.^[8] The Abbey built shops and dwellings on the west side, encroaching upon the sanctuary.
The Abbey became the coronation site of Norman kings, but none were buried there until Henry III, intensely devoted to the cult of the Confessor, rebuilt the Abbey in Anglo-French Gothic style as a shrine to honour Saint Edward the Confessor and as a suitably regal setting for Henry's own tomb, under the highest Gothic nave in England. The Confessor's shrine subsequently played a great part in his canonisation. The work continued between 1245 and 1517 and was largely finished by the architect Henry Yevele in the reign of Richard II. Henry VII added a Perpendicular style chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1503 (known as the Henry VII Chapel). Much of the stone came from Caen, in France (Caen stone), the Isle of Portland (Portland stone) and the Loire Valley region of France (tuffeau limestone).

A statue of Virgin Mary, holding the child Jesus, above the Great North Door at Westminster Abbey

In 1535, the Abbey's annual income of £2400–2800^{[citation needed]} (£980,000 to £1,140,000 as of 2011),^[9] during the assessment attendant on the Dissolution of the Monasteries rendered it second in wealth only to Glastonbury Abbey. Henry VIII had assumed direct royal control in 1539 and granted the Abbey cathedral status by charter in 1540, simultaneously issuing letters patent establishing the Diocese of Westminster. By granting the Abbey cathedral status Henry VIII gained an excuse to spare it from the destruction or dissolution which he inflicted on most English abbeys during this period. Westminster was a cathedral only until 1550. The expression "robbing Peter to pay Paul" may arise from this period when money meant for the Abbey, which is dedicated to Saint Peter, was diverted to the treasury of St Paul's Cathedral.

The Nave of Westminster Abbey

The Abbey was restored to the Benedictines under the Roman Catholic Mary I of England, but they were again ejected under Elizabeth I in 1559. In 1579, Elizabeth re-established Westminster as a "Royal Peculiar"—a church responsible directly to the Sovereign, rather than to a diocesan bishop—and made it the Collegiate Church of St Peter (that is, a church with an attached chapter of canons, headed by a dean). The last Abbot was made the first Dean. It suffered damage during the turbulent 1640s, when it was attacked by Puritan iconoclasts, but was again protected by its close ties to the state during the Commonwealth period. Oliver Cromwell was given an elaborate funeral there in 1658, only to be disinterred in January 1661 and posthumously hanged from a nearby gibbet.
The Abbey's two western towers were built between 1722 and 1745 by Nicholas Hawksmoor, constructed from Portland stone to an early example of a Gothic Revival design. Purbeck marble was used for the walls and the floors of Westminster Abbey, even though the various tombstones are made of different types of marble. Further rebuilding and restoration occurred in the 19th century under Sir George Gilbert Scott. A narthex (a portico or entrance hall) for the west front was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in the mid 20th century but was not executed. Images of the Abbey prior to the construction of the towers are scarce, though the Abbey's official website states that the building was without towers following Yevele's renovation, with just the lower segments beneath the roof level of the Nave completed.
Until the 19th century, Westminster was the third seat of learning in England, after Oxford and Cambridge. It was here that the first third of the King James Bible Old Testament and the last half of the New Testament were translated. The New English Bible was also put together here in the 20th century. Westminster suffered minor damage during the Blitz on 15 November 1940.
In the 1990s two icons by Russian icon painter Sergei Fyodorov were hung in the Abbey.^[10] On 6 September 1997 the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales was held at the Abbey. On 17 September 2010 Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to set foot in the Abbey.^{[11] end quote from wikipedia.}