Tower of London

It rocked. It was so cool. It was so worth the worse-than-Kentucky schizophrenic weather. I know we all joke if you don't like the weather wait five minutes but in London, at least on Monday, it was completely true. We were waiting on a Tower tour and from 11:18 to 11:25 (the tour start) it was sunny with blue skies, downpouring, drizzling, sunny AND raining, and completely overcast but no rain. The tour itself was super-cool - the Yeoman Warders (beef-eater guys) seem to be hand-picked to have a great sense of showmanship and humor which added to the subject matter made for an awesome tour. They showed us where Anne Boleyn (and 2 other queens) were executed; they talked about the famous prisoners and they went over burial locations of the Crown's "evil bad guys". A weird thing to me: they bury people IN the churches here - the tower, St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey all have lots of people buried beneath the floor, in crypts, or just laying about in the church proper. When they had to re-do the chapel in the Tower they found hundreds of corpses buried in there under the floor and altar - seriously (the three queens got to be the special altar people). We saw the Crown Jewels and the Armouries and actual official guards that patrolled the building with the Crown Jewels and the building with the keys to the Tower. It was fantastic. It was a little pricey, but worth every penny and even a few more. It fascinated me to hear little tidbits like the Tower has been open for tours since the 1700s. It's been a tourist spot for longer than our country has existed!

When we finished up, including visiting about 17 of the gift shops on the grounds, we leisurely strolled toward our pre-picked lunch location; slowly but surely we're working through timing and best meal values etc. Here's a cute pic of us with Tower Bridge (see Kris we really ARE in London!) Concerning food - we have been using the Zagat's book for restaurant recommendations and while the places they recommend are good the food is PRICEY (although lunches are pretty decent when price-fixed). After re-fueling we headed to St. Paul's - we got there after the tours finished so we got some exterior shots, and got to hear some of the Evensong which was also pretty cool. Dinner was a "curry house" right up the road where you have to PAY EXTRA FOR RICE. It's the teeny differences that kinda shock me. Why would they think Korma would be good without rice?? On to Day 4 and the British Museum!

the WORLD closes early on Sundays

I base this statement on the fact that it was hard to find something to do today. Some of the always open options, like the Tower, were SUPER crowded but we were determined to do London things. We woke up a little early, and decided to museum it up today. Not the big, bad British Museum, but a couple of the other bajillion famous places around here. We went to the National Gallery, right across from Trafalgar Square, one of the must-hits on my list. Trafalgar Square was the location of a biiiig Turkey demonstration today - no real option of just Rita/Blaine with the lions especially when the Americans stink signs showed up in various places.


(This is from the porch, if such a Kentucky word can work here from the National Gallery).

After the gallery we hoofed to the Albert Victoria museum of weird stuff that could be art and could be crap. The last part is my personal add-on. Some parts were completely oh, let's say not my particular taste (seriously, one woman's art was to cover a screw with precious metal and put it in a wall) some were really very interesting (the rug from Turkey was COOL) and some were just awe-inspiring; like the plaster casts of famous cool stuff.
This is Trajan's column from Rome; full-size and copied in the early 1800's - this whole room was plaster casts of stuff from everywhere that are cool and the plaster casts are older than most of the stuff in our neck of the woods. It was by far our favorite room. After that we headed out to Indian food (another must do) and then to our neighborhood pub for a pint and a wind-down. We've adjusted to London time and we're getting ready for bed so we can do the Tower of London and St. Paul's Cathedral tomorrow. It's odd; in a restaurant or museum it's easy to think that you could be in any urban area but step outside the doors and POOF - London. I'll be interested to see what happens tomorrow at some quintessential London hotspots. So good night, so long, and until tomorrow gentle readers!

CopperDays and the 5 Dwarfs

While it was an admirable goal to try and do something cool on our first day - it kinda didn't end up happening. We left our hotel yesterday afternoon with the intent of going to the London Eye to get a lay of the land, look at something that doesn't require a lot of concentration and accomplish a cool London thing on our first day. Wellllll - we successfully and fairly easily Tubed it up and got over to the Jubilee Gardens and London Eye but that was about it. At that time the dwarfs accompanying our journery were Sneezy (Blaine is pretending he's not sick), Happy (LONDON BABY!), and Sleepy. We got lost, walked in a couple of circles, found Dopey on the way, and finally found this GINORMOUS Ferris Wheel with pods that give great London views.

Yeah! We're so excited; we're so willing, we're so ready we're so...not going on that thing. The line was approximately 4 hours long. I've read that Brits see a queue and join it but I had never seen it in action. At that point we pulled out a map and using Dopey's advice decided to walk to the Millenium bridge (which is about 3 - 5 miles away; Dopey can't read maps). It started raining on the walk and while we found this super cool book fair (CHEAP books and cool titles; a little piece of Heaven) we got hungry, found Grumpy, re-read the map to find out we were REALLY far away and went looking for dinner and home. We got fish and chips at the Fishcoteque (seriously) which were good and came back. We rested for a bit and then went out on the night version of our own Tower Bridge tour that Darren's already posted about. :)

More testing (but more pictures!)

So maybe I'll try a more interesting image here. Here is Tower Bridge. We walked over it Saturday night, in a successful attempt to stave off a jetlagged-induced early bedtime of 6pm.

It was a great move. The night was a bit drizzly and cold but the bridge was beautiful. We had a few pints and dessert at a Wetherspoon pub we found on the other side of the river. Sleep was postponed until the much more decent hour of 22:00 GMT.


Tomorrow we're actually going to visit the Tower Bridge museuem, the Tower of London, and St. Paul's Cathedral.

testing out image uploads

image88
Originally uploaded by copperdays

So Rita will follow up with a real blog post with better stories, etc, and I may do that as well. Right now I'm just trying out various ways to upload pictures to the blog.

This is not a very amazing picture. I was just amused to see Budweiser in the world beers section. Plus I'd had a few other beers (and recently at that) when I found this amusing. So there! Drink enough to be amused and hold on for better stories and pictures!

We're Here

and we're completely exhausted. I *sort of* got crap sleep on the plane while Blaine got 1 teeny tiny catnap and is currently running on adrenaline and insanity (seriously he only got like 20 minutes). However, in an effort to try and get on London time if we nap it will be very short. I also have to say that while flying in to Gatwick was way cheaper and we'd probably do it again - it is VERY far away. Our flight got in at 9:30 GMT, we got to the hotel, with no dwadling, at noon. But we're here, we're clean and we're about to head out and brave the big bad city. wooo. London. (too tired to use exclamation marks but still SUPER excited)

So long for now!

Well the time is at hand. I'm shutting down the old laptop and getting ready to pack it up for London. It's time to go and I'm completely over-excited and a little tired and a little overwhelmed and pretty darn prepared. Try not to miss us too much and the next post will be from London!!