Monday, September 19, 2016

London - Day 1

London is busy! Perhaps even busier than Paris. Like downtown San Francisco times five. Or maybe six. Or maybe ten!

First on our list today was the The Tower of London. Home of the Crown Jewels, the Bloody Tower and the place where many unfortunate people met their demise. We went straight in to see the Crown Jewels first as I've heard the line becomes pretty long if you wait til later in the morning.  We saw some very impressive crowns, scepters and the golden orb. We also took a tour with a Yeoman Warder. It's an entertaining tour, pretty funny most of it.  Most people don't know that the Yeoman Warders are actual military personnel, one of their jobs is bodyguard to the Queen. We went into the Bloody Tower but not much to see there really, just one room.  The White Tower has some armor and weapons too, but it's tough to beat the collection we saw in Graz last year.

We debated about whether or not to do the Tower Bridge Tour and decided to go up because we had a 2-4-1 offer. I think we could have skipped it, to be honest.  Not much of a wow factor and the only fun part was taking our picture on the glass floor over the river.

HMS Belfast was up next.  It's a World War II ship that's now a museum and permanently docked in London. We climbed around the different decks and, when we got to the top decks, we were told we had to go to a higher deck as a ship was coming to dock alongside the Belfast. Oh! I forgot to say that we watched from the deck of the Belfast as the Tower Bridge raised its lower level to allow a tall sailing ship to pass through.  Anyway, we watched now as a Brazilian naval vessel came in and docked next to the Belfast. We enjoyed watching the crews get the Brazilian ship tied up to the Belfast and all the interaction that went on. It seemed to take awhile as the dock guys on the Belfast were having some trouble deciding exactly where they wanted to tie up the ropes and there was a lot of dragging ropes back and forth.  It was really hot outside too, about 85 degrees and a little humid so we were hoping they could get it together and get the boat tied off quickly.  We were in need of a cool drink!

The 2-4-1 offer I found was a great deal, we saved over £100 in the three days we were in London and it only cost me £9.20! Yowza!

No comments:

Post a Comment