It has it all - oldness (1066), history, jewels, Beefeaters, people's heads falling off - it was what I was most looking forward to seeing in London.
On the weekends, much like in Chicago, they do work on the subways, so that was an unexpected hitch in my plans, but like I've said before, getting around here in incredibly easy on the tubes, so it wasn't that big of a deal. But it caused Koichi to be about a half hour late again. I'm learning that most Brits show up late, never early for things.
I met up with my group from the day before and we tried to go into the Tower all together but were separated and I ended up not seeing them the rest of the day.
As soon as I got in, I hooked on to the last guided tour from a Yeoman Warder (Beefeater, they live on the premises) and took the last half of the tour.
We stopped by the site of the scaffold where the likes of Anne Boleyn were beheaded. To commemorate these people dying, they have a plastic pillow. Classy.
Then went inside the church where they are buried, along with over a thousand other people put to death.
From there I went into the White Tower, the oldest building from 1066. I first stopped by the cutout where they discovered the Princes of the Tower, who 'disappeared' but boy's bones were discovered a couple hundred years later, the biggest suspect being their uncle who was King in the interim until they could get old enough.
From there I went into the White Tower, which is now an armory museum. There's only so much of old guns and swords you can look at. I was more interested in the building itself. It felt like a medieval castle, it just would have been nicer if there weren't crying children running around.
Next I went and saw the royal jewels. They have the important ones behind glass with a moving pathway in front, sort of a great idea I thought. They were impressive, particularly the imperial crown.
From there I headed over to the Beauchamp Tower, which might have been the most interesting there. This is where they held prisoners. The best part was on the second floor in the room where they stayed where hundreds of them carved their names and a quote in the wall.
Then I went into the Bloody Tower, named because of the supposed murder site of the two Princes. Walter Raleigh spent years living (rather luxuriously) in there as well.
At that point it was about 4:30 and they were closing down. I saw the major attractions, but probably about half of what I wanted to, so I'll have to go back for sure. If anyone comes to visit, we'll go.
I was somewhat disapointed with it, partly because I didn't get to spent much time on it and the crowds, but some of it because a lot of the history was gone and replaced by different exhibits in the room that just sort of took away from the feeling of the place. I'm sure it'll be better next time I go and spend more time there.
I came back and ate, and since I didn't have much else going on, I decided to take a walking tour, unfortunately, back down at Tower Hill. I took the Jack the Ripper tour, led by a guy who has published multiple books on Jack, and even has the supposed murder weapon.
The tour group was pretty huge, maybe around 30-40 people, and on top of that, four other companies were giving a Jack tour at the same time, so we didn't get as close to some of the sites as I would have liked.
The guide knew a ton about Jack and it was a solid tour, but some of it suffered from the areas being rebuilt, so that you don't really get a feel for what it was like back then. One of the murder sites is on a corner of a street, and the cobblestone is the same from 1888, which I thought was pretty cool. But many of the sites were not really visible or had changed. A couple remained, and that was very interesting. But given the huge group size, it wasn't as good as I would have hoped.
Tomorrow will probably be a somewhat of a catch-up day, maybe look into booking another trip, doing some emails, maybe doing some journalism stuff, groceries, checking to see if I need to read anything before classes start, but since I don't start until Wednesday, I have plenty of time to get things done. I hope I always have five-day weekends.
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