Loving London

The weekend before last, we went to London on Saturday for some sightseeing and culture. The plan was to meet up with Dotti, who was staying at Matt and Kat's with two other girls from Nottingham, go to the Tower of London and the Natural History Museum, and then have dinner and see a play that night with a group of friends.

We arrived in London early and had a couple of hours to pass before meeting Dotti. We decided to go back to Covent Garden, and we got there so early (for London anyway – it was around 9am) that the market vendors and buskers were still setting up. It was quite chilly so we enjoyed some hot chocolate and chocolate cookies from a Ben's Cookies shop. :) By the way, Covent Garden has some association with the English beginnings of the Punch and Judy puppet show, which explains some of the below pics!

When we emerged from the Tower Hill tube station, which was opposite the impressive castle/fortress that is the Tower of London, we learnt that Dotti was still a fair way away, so we decided to go for a wander.

A nearby sign revealed that Petticoat Lane was only a 9 minute walk away, so off we set. Mum had been quite keen for us to go to Petticoat Lane as she has a little silver vase that her employer bought her from a gift shop there about 33 years ago! Anyway, as the markets in Petticoat Lane are on Sundays, there was not much happening there – the street was lined with the metal skeletons of market stalls, and men with jackhammers were working on the footpath. It seemed to be a street full of textile shops and shoe stores! Interestingly, Petticoat Lane is actually called Middlesex Street. It was once Petticoat Lane, but in 1830 the Victorians changed its name to avoid any reference to women's underwear – an unsuccessful endeavour evidently!

After a wander along Petticoat Lane, it was time to head back to the Tower Hill tube station to meet Dotti. We decided to be lazy and take the tube from the nearest station, Aldgate East. As it turned out, we definitely should have walked. Due to some incredible feat of silliness, we managed to catch the wrong tube not once, not twice, but THREE times!!! So we went back and forth along the same section of track before eventually breaking free and making it back to Tower Hill. I later found out that the Aldgate East tube station is right in the centre of the few blocks' radius in which Jack the Ripper carried out his horrible crimes in the late 19^th century.

After finally meeting Dotti, it was early afternoon and we set off for the Tower of London... home of the crown jewels and a very gruesome (but royal) history (read on for a very toned down version of what we heard!). To get there, we actually walked on one end of the Tower Bridge, which was awesome as we'd never been up close to it before.

After collecting our tickets (already purchased online), we ate some fish and chips for lunch and then crossed the moat and entered the Tower grounds. It's not actually just one tower – in the centre is the White Tower, which is the oldest part, but it is a very large complex with lots of other buildings, open areas, and huge stone walls all the way around. Well, it was awesome!! We didn't make it to the Natural History Museum after all, as we spent the next 5 or so hours just exploring the Tower...

First, we did a tour with a Yeoman Warder guide, which was absolutely brilliant. They are the oldest continuing military unit in the entire world, and they have been guarding the Tower of London since 1485. There are currently 35 Yeoman Warders (aka Beefeaters), all of whom are retired from the British Armed Forces and must be former senior non-commissioned officers with at least 22 years of service. They must also hold long service and good conduct medals. They actually live in flats that are in the walls of the complex! They have their own doctor and vicar living there too, and each night the complex is locked up and no one is allowed in or out until morning. The locking up tradition, called the Ceremony of the Keys, has taken place every night without fail for at least 700 years. Unbelievable!!!

Our guide was actually the Ravenmaster, the Yeoman Warder who looks after the Tower's ravens. It is thought that ravens have lived at the Tower since at least the 1600s, although there are only six or eight of them now. Legend has it that should the ravens ever leave the Tower, the tower and the monarchy will crumble, so looking after these birds is quite an important responsibility and they are very well fed!

During our tour, we heard many gruesome true stories that I'm not going to repeat here. The majority of them were about beheadings, which was a popular public event in the old days, and we learnt that they took place on what is now a little patch of green grass beside the Tower Hill tube station we had arrived at earlier. In the entire history of the Tower, only seven beheadings were ever done in private, within the Tower's grounds. These seven people were nobles, five of them women, and amongst them were two wives of Henry VIII: Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

We actually stood at the new memorial on the spot where these took place, and during our tour we sat inside the church where the bodies of those seven people are still buried today. We were told whilst in the church that at some more recent stage, one of the queens (Victoria?) had the other bodies exhumed from underneath the church and buried somewhere else – and there were 1500 of them. Unimaginable. To be right where these events took place – things I've vaguely known about since I was little – feels quite surreal. It's very hard to comprehend what used to happen right where you are now enjoying a pleasant touristy type of experience!

After our tour, we spent lots more time just wandering around the various museums and displays on offer. We saw the crown jewels – basically a large collection of unbelievably expensive, flashy royal bling – crowns, sceptres, swords, rings, etc. Ben was almost as impressed by the massive vault doors! One of the more amazing things we saw was a weighty punch bowl about a metre across and probably almost as high, apparently made of solid gold, and with figures of cherubs and lions etc all around the outside of it. The ladle was in the shape of a massive conch shell – made of gold!

There was also an extensive weapons museum where we saw hundreds of guns mounted in frames and on the walls, suits of armour (including one for a giant and tiny gift ones for child princes), life-size sculptures of horses that were hundreds of years old (the sculptures, not the horses!), some torture instruments, and much more.

There was even a hands-on section where you could try things out – pulling back on a bow and arrow, testing the weight of various weapons, and experiencing the limited vision of someone wearing a suit of armour. All up, we definitely recommend a visit to the Tower of London if you get the chance... unless you have a particularly weak stomach!

After finishing up at the Tower, we set off to meet the others for dinner before the play. We ate at Wagamama's in Covent Garden with Matt, Kat, Clarice, Beth, Andrew M and Andrew R.

Then, we set off around the corner to our theatre, on Strand, where we met the remaining members of our group – Murray and Mel. A hilarious couple of hours then followed, during which we thoroughly enjoyed the “tangled web” storyline and nonstop wit that is The Importance of Being Earnest. Absolutely brilliant – my favourite London show so far! (Ben liked The 39 Steps a little bit more though.)

Afterwards, the eleven of us crossed the Thames and ate dessert in an Italian restaurant before catching our various tubes and trains home. And that was our most recent day in London!