Today we slept in!! Yay! We got up around 10:30am and took our time getting out to do our sightseeing today. First we hoofed it over to Westminster Abbey, which actually isn't that far, just behind Parliament, on the other side of the Waterloo Bridge. It cost £12 (about $24) to see the inside of the Abbey...yeah, right, we passed on that one. After the Abbey we took the tube out to Tower Hill. It was now about noon, so we found a place to eat some lunch. We chose a traditional London Pub and had some fish and chips. Yum-my!! Oh it was so good. Nice crispy tempura battered fish and great fries with a whole slathering of malt vinegar. One curious part of the lunch was that the menu said the F & C came with "mushy peas". One would expect that meant peas that have been mushed? And if that was true, why the hell would you mash my peas? So, I eagerly anticipated exactly what was going to be brought to me. "Mushy peas" are actually peas that were quite al dente... I'm still confused about this. After lunch we went to tour the Tower Bridge. The exhibition starts in the north tower, where you ride up a lift (elevator) to the elevated footpaths. Then you walk along the east upper bridge crossing toward the south tower looking out at the sights of London. This footbridge over looks the financial district and Canary Wharf. Once you get to the south tower, you cross over and explore the west elevated footpath. This over looks the City of Westminster, the "Gherkin" (big glass pointy building that when it was opened they lit up green, thereby looking like a pickle), and gives a good birdseye view of the Tower of London. It was while we were exploring the catwalks that we had our first bout of London rain. We had been having such great weather, I was beginning to think all this "it rains a lot here" talk was a farce. The last stop on our Tower Bridge exploration was the engine room, and of course, the gift shop. It was while we were in the gift shop that some man from Maryland tried to pick Chadd up. I quickly shuttled him away. We found out the bridge was going to open up for a boat at 3:15, so we left the bridge, went and bought our tickets for the Tower of London and parked ourselves on the riverbank to watch the bridge open. After that, we toured the Tower of London, which has apparently had many duties in it's long existence. One cool thing is that they have guides walking around in period costumes, and the Beefeaters were there as well. I just missed getting a picture of one. Anyway, the Tower of London has been a palace, a fortress, a prision and execution center (it's most notorious use), and now it is home to the crown jewels. The crown jewels were very pretty, almost too pretty, that they looked fake! The coolest thing in the room was this HUGE punch bowl, a small person could literally bathe in this punch bowl! And the ladle was enormous! The Beauchamp Tower had many engravings from the prisioners that were held there. My observation was either a) Thomas was a very popular name back then or b) there were lots of prisioners named Thomas! We also explored Bloody Tower, so named because two princes (ages 9 & 12) supposedly went missing there and they think their uncle (who was to become King Richard) got rid of them so that he could have the crown. The White Tower was the largest and held all kinds of weapons and armour. All the staircases in these towers were so tight and twirly, I needed a damn Meclizine (vertigo drug) when I was done! We were at the tower until closing time, 5 pm. Since we needed to go to bed early, our flight tomorrow for Paris is at 6:15 am, we decided to have an early dinner. We crossed the river and walked along the water and checked out the available eateries. I had my first crappy English food at this restaurant. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. The steak, although cooked nicely, the only flavor it had was of a charcoal grill. And the mashed potatoes? One would at least expect them to taste like potatoes that have been mashed, but no, they tasted like, well......nothing. After dinner it was starting to get dark and I wanted to see the Tower Bridge at night. We hung out on the boardwalk until dusk and took some pictures with the illuminated bridge. Then we went back to the hotel to pack for Paris and get a good night sleep! On the train back everyone, and I mean everyone, was reading a copy of the newspaper that they hand out in the tube stations, "The London Paper". Guess who made the front page? Yup. Georgie Porgie. Apparently after his arrest, he took off with Kenny in a private jet on holiday, and he apologized to his fans for screwing up again. Hmmmm...maybe he is in Paris? Once we got back to the hotel, Chadd mentioned that his side of the bed had a slant to it, I thought my side was fine, so we switched. Well I'll be, it was like sleeping on the side of a mountain! Weird. More London observations: There are NO trash cans in this city. However, there is also no litter on the street. How this works, I do not know. You can walk for 40 minutes, through tube stations, railway stations, tourist areas, and not find a trash can. Also, their bathrooms are so clean! Clean pee-shacks = good! (P.S. theirs no speel chek on thiz programe, So deel wit it)
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