Day 2's agenda went like this:
- Take the tube to the Westminster exit and walk to Westminster Abbey
- Tour Westminster Abbey
- Walk around the city of Westminster and check out the houses of Parliament
- Walk to the Banquet House and have a tour
- Walk to the Thames River and get on the boat cruise
- Take the boat cruise tour from Westminster to the Tower of London exit
- See the Tower Bridge
- Tour the Tower of London
- Roam around a bit to kill some time before the Jack the Ripper Tour
- Take the tube to Whitechapel
- Do the Jack the Ripper tour - at night!
Can I just say that everything in England is so intricate and ornate! It's not like these buildings were built in one year or something, they were built over many many years, sometimes hundreds of years! And let's not forget that Westminster Abbey was started in the 10 hundreds - that's like 1088 I believe. SHEESH!
This is actually the front. The front of these places is always less impressive than the sides and backs to me. Westminster and Notre Dame look surprisingly similar - as you'll see when we get to Day 4!
This is the back - see what I mean?
On our walk to the Banqueting House, we came across some random protest. There were even helicopters in the sky filming or something. This was about taxation, regardless of what the signs in the picture indicate. The people across the street at the building are the real protestors.
This was at the Banqueting House. We didn't get good pictures here but it was a cool place. This was where the kings would have banquets of course!
On our boat cruise we were able to see many of the famous London landmarks! This was the Eye of London. We never had a desire to go on it - it's like $30 a person!
Houses of Parliament and Big Ben - of course Big Ben is the BELL inside the tower, not the clock!
The new "Shard of London"
The famous Tower Bridge. This is NOT the London Bridge as many people think. In fact, London Bridge is a boring older bridge and apparently it was so unmemorable that we didn't even get a picture of it!
The view of the Tower of London from our boat.
As we docked we were right near the Tower Bridge. This was built by Queen Victoria in the 1800s - you can kinda tell that if you pay attention to architecture styles :)
And now we enter the Tower of London! This was one of my most anticipated places to see because I had recently watched a 5 part mini-series documentary about the history of the Tower. It has so much history that it's just unreal.
Traitor's Gate - where all of the traitor's to the crown would be shackled in to through!
Here I am listening to the start of our audio tour. All the very touristy areas had these cool audio guides. Basically there were numbered signs everywhere and all you had to do was type the number into your little machine and it would start playing some interesting information about what you were looking at - kind of like carrying a cell phone around with you everywhere!
One of the rooms within the one of the oldest sections of the castle.
Up on the wall we had a great view of the Tower Bridge.
Now we're going to head into this building, this is the main Tower...the White Tower. Notice how the stairs are made of wood and the door is kinda high up. This was done on purpose in case someone attacked the fortress. All they had to do was burn the stairs down and whoever was inside the tower would be safe!
They had some really cool armor on display throughout the place.
This is called Kings Row because it had all of the different kings' armor along with a statue of their favorite horse - all life size!
Now we're outside into one of the courtyards. The Queen's apartment is back there in the background - you can see the guard standing by the door. She's not there now of course, but if she wanted to visit, that's where she'd go.
I'm there listening to the audio guide again. Incidentally, this was one of the courtyards where they'd do the hangings. Pretty grim...but it was still nice looking :)
There are special Ravens at the Tower. Apparently one of the kings said once "As long as there are Ravens at the Tower, it shall stand" - or something like that. So they keep about 8 Ravens at all times and they keep them nice and fat because the Yeoman Wardens feed them raw meat every day like this below.
The birds aren't afraid of people either - they see them all the time. We were able to walk right up to this one and get so close (you'll see in the next few days that we took LOTS of pictures of birds - cause we love them). You will also notice that his right wing is clipped so he can't fly away :P
It was rare to see a rose bush in bloom at this time of year so I had to have a picture!
And now we're done touring the inside of the Tower. How's this nice building just outside? Such an awesome name for a pub - if you don't know the phrase, look it up and you'll see!
It was also a short walk to the Tower Bridge itself so we made our way over to that as well.
And just behind the fortress you can still see the remains of the old Roman wall for the city of Londonium. The Romans were there first and part of their original wall still exists - pretty dang awesome!
And this is where our pictures end. Because our Jack the Ripper tour was night, we didn't really get any pictures. But the tour was pretty cool because it was something I had been waiting to see as well! I've always had a fascination with London at the time of Jack the Ripper and it was cool to walk through some of the same places where events like that took place.
This was the actual tour we did: http://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/
And I gotta saw that the tour guide did a fantastic job! She was apparently a Jack the Ripper researcher herself and was publishing a book - very interesting!
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