October 26th
We awake for our final full day in London. The plan is to get to the Tower early, but we're running a bit behind. Well, hopefully it won't be too jam-packed. I didn't see the inside of the Tower at all on my previous trip to London, and it's something I want to see this time.
In the Tube on the way to the Tower, we see Mr. Hangover. He's a man dressed in a business suit that's a bit rumpled, and he reeks of strong drink. There are people who get up from sitting next to him. This is at 930 in the morning, so he must have had quite a night. Probably going to not be the most productive guy on the job this morning.
We get to the Tower of London at 952. Brian gets a picture of a clock somewhere to let us verify this. The admission is even more than the tourist book said. I seem to rembember this being about £5 back in 1980, and it's £10.50 now. Pretty spendy, but there's a lot of history here.
The Yeoman Warder tour of the Tower sounds pretty good. I was planning on skipping it and just walking around on our own, but there's a tour starting, and as we walk past it, I'm caught by the commentary. The tour ends up being humorous and very informative. If you do take the Yeoman Warder tour, make sure you have change for a tip at the end, since it seems to be expected. The tour takes a little less than an hour.
|
|
After the tour, it's time to walk around a bit on our own. First thing is to grab a few pictures of the ravens, a bit of a walk around deciding which attraction seems least likely to be completely full of tourists while taking pictures of the outside of the White Tower. We decide to tour the White Tower first. It takes about an hour to walk through, but it's basically a weapons museum. Pretty interesting stuff. |
Next we go to see the Crown Jewels. This is a smaller exhibit, and there's a lot of crowns and jewels alright. They're very pretty, but the actual crown jewels have a moving walkway by them to keep people moving along.
We take the wall walk (which has some more history of the jewels) and a little bit of walking around to make sure we haven't missed anything we really want to see, but I think we're done with the Tower now. If you want to take pictures here that don't have people in them, I think your best bet would be to arrive early and dash ahead of any tours to go get your pictures. Then do the buildings, and then finally come back for the full tour last.
Now that we're done with the Tower, it's time to head off to Greenwich. It's about 12:30, so we figure we can take the Docklands Light Rail out there, and eat lunch in Greenwich. It's a pretty good plan, but we didn't count on the rail ending at London Arena (due to construction on the part of the line that goes under the Thames to Greenwich). We have to take a shuttle-bus from there to the end of the line. From where the shuttle-bus drops us, it's a few blocks walk to the river. There's a pedestrian tunnel we can walk through to get across, and as we enter it, I notice a sign saying something about the south lift being broken. I don't think much about it, since this is really our only way across, but after going down the stairs on the north end, I start to wonder if this is such a good idea. We make it up the steps on the south end, but even Brian's winded when we get to the top.
I've been informed (17 October, 2002) by Robin Scates, the Trade Marketing Manager at the National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory Greenwich, that the Docklands Light Rail now comes right into the centre of Greenwich (no steps to climb) and that admission to the Observatory is now free.
| After catching our breath, we look around a bit. We've come out right next to the Cutty Sark, and sure enough, it looks just like the liquor bottles, but without sails. |
|
It's after 2pm now, and we're getting hungry, so we stop at the first pub we see to get some lunch. Good thing, too, as the barman's just putting away the lunch, and gives us a bit of a discount on the food we get. Pretty good food anyhow, and we have an O'Hanlon's Union Ale, and think of our friend Bill. We fail to get him a souvenir, though. Drat.
After a somewhat confusing walk to the National Maritime Museum, we look at the schedules and decide that while the museum might be neat, we really only have time to see the observatory, and since it's up on top of a hill, it's going to take a few minutes to walk there.
|
|
|
The Royal Observatory Greenwich has the Prime Meridian running through it. We buy tickets for just the observatory, and walk through. It takes a few minutes to get pictures of the prime meridian and the laser pointer that don't have people in them, but I think it's worth it. Then on the walking tour. Not only does the observatory have a good collection of astronomical exhibits, but there's a very impressive collection of time-pieces and other attempts people made of solving the problem of knowing when it's noon in Greenwich when you're away at sea. That's pretty important, since without accurate time-keeping, there's no way of knowing your longitude. The gift shop has a bunch of cheap watches, but they fail to sell me on anything. If they had a replica of the H4 clock (it looks like an oversized pocket watch) that won the Longitude Prize (it was accurate enough to navigate by), I'd think pretty hard about buying that, but they don't. |
The view from the Observatory is pretty good. We take a few pictures of the
Millenium Dome and the Canary Wharf Tower, and then it's time to walk down the
hill, under the river and back into London on the DLR. We decide to go to the Bank station,
which connects to the Monument station so we can see the Monument. Turns out, it's a
Monument to the City ![[Footnote46]](images/foot.gif){kind=small}
, put up after the great fire.
|
|
|
Our final sightseeing stop is Picadilly Circus. I remember it being a lot seedier when I was here in 1980, but now it reminds me more of the pictures I've seen of the new Disnified Times Square in New York. There are some buskers, and I give a few coins to a drum-jam that's going on.
Finally, back to the hotel, and then to The Devonshire Arms for a beer or two. We can't make it a really late night, since we've got to get up at 5:30 in order to make it to the airport for our flight that leaves shortly after noon. Ugh.
Previous -- Vacation Home -- Next