London Part Two

So onto the Tower of London. The Tower of London is a former royal residence/prison/fortress probably best known for as a site of a multitude of executions including Anne Boleyn. Today it is the site of the crown jewels. The Tower is actually kind of a village enclosed in thick walls as there is a palace and numerous other buildings on the site. There are tours led by "beefeaters" every half hour and one was starting momentarily when I arrived at the Tower entrance. The tour guide was quite humorous, and joked about the US's youth quite often (the tour was about 1/3 Americans according to a show of hands). We first walked through the gate into the site and were shown where hot oil was poured out of openings on the heads of would-be invaders. Other notorious sites were pointed out during the tour (such as where particular "traitors" entered the site, were tortured and imprisoned and where certain executions were as well as where kings like Henry VIII lived when at the Tower). It was a beautiful day for a tour and ended with a visit to the chapel on the site. I then went to the building which housed the crown jewels and perused the crowns and other royal jewels worn by British royalty for many hundreds of years.

However, the place was quite crowded (although it must not have been too crowded based on the enormous, but completely empty, space for queuing to see the crown jewels) and I didn't spend too much time after the tour browsing around. I then headed north of the Tower and made my way to Spitalfield's Market which was about a 15 minute walk. The Market is supposed to be quite good and I was hoping to find some fabric, but Tuesday is not a big market day, so there wasn't a lot to look at and I ended up just getting lunch at a burger place (and it was a fabulous burger). Given the lack of stuff at the market, I had more time than I anticipated, so I decided to head further north to a museum I had read about in my London book. It was The Geffrye--Museum of the Home and was another 15 minute walk to the north. The neighborhood I walked through was not as nice and touristy as the other areas I had been in, but nevertheless, there were always people around and the streets were busy so I felt quite safe.

I really enjoyed the Geffrye Museum. It has a series of "rooms" decorated and furnished according to different time periods starting in the 1600s. The exhibits with each period room had information about what architecture was like at the time, and how homes were managed (like what women's roles were and so on). The outside of the museum had a series of gardens arranged and planted according to what was common during different time periods. It was quite lovely and interesting to see the different functions and forms that gardens and landscaping took over the past 400 years. In addition to the period gardens, there was a large, quiet  garden space with benches and I relished the quiet (although, of course, there were a number of other people in the park as well) and read a bit before I headed back in the way I had came, toward the Liverpool underground station, which was near Spitalfields. I got on the underground back to Great Portland Street station which is right by our hotel and it was around 5 PM. I estimate that I walked around 5 miles during my travels that day.

Jason was back from his conference, so we then decided to go to a pub Jason had read about, “The Green Man”, which was about a 15 minute walk from our hotel. After sitting at our table at the pub for quite some time, we discovered that ordering at a pub is done at the counter. However, we finally placed our order and tried some more local beers and ciders and enjoyed the ambiance of a local pub. Jason again tried some traditional fare (fish and chips) and I ordered, um, chicken strips. But they were really good chicken strips! It was also interesting that outside the pub there were just a bunch of people standing around within a roped off area drinking their drinks. Sidewalk space (and patios for that matter) is hard to come by in London, so people just stand outside pubs with their beers. It’s treated like an extension of the pub, but there just aren’t tables.

We again retired rather early, around 9PM, but then Jason woke up around 11AM and watched some TV for a few hours before falling asleep again.