A quieter day today as I had a late start and then spent most of the day at Tower of London. After the last bus fiasco decided to take the train for the first time, the station is about 20 mins walk away in a different direction to previous walking trips. No phone booth/letter box photos today but who needs them when you find a TARDIS (well, a police box).
Still loving how (it seems) every pub makes such an effort to look attractive - Aussie pubs could learn a few lessons on attracting customers.
The train to brings you out only a short walk from the entry to the Tower of London.
There are a LOT of stairs in the place. Seems like often you walk up 6 stairs then down 4 stairs then up 5 stairs to get to a room. And then there are the tightly winding narrow ones up to other floors or the battlements ...
Another 'Regency' thing I was tracking was that there was a menagerie - numerous animals on display at the Tower of London which people used to visit. The Tower folks have cleverly put wire sculptures of the animals in some of the places where they used to be kept (the poor things).
The Tower has also house the Royal Mint and the Armoury, so there are also displays about these, including this beautifully decorated 24-pounder cannon and gun carriage.
And the two traditionally-uniformed guards
The big-ticket item at the Tower is the display of the Crown Jewels. First, join the 1/2 hour queue to get in ...
No photography allowed inside. Cross the threshold of some very significant vault doors into the main room, where there are several crowns with the jewels removed and 'recycled' into later crowns as well as Consort Crowns (for wives of kings). There is a huge amount of gold items such as sceptres and the largest punch bowl you will ever see, and of course the current Imperial State Crown. They have installed flat travelators on either side of the crown displays, so you stand sideways and get moved sideways to view the crowns. A clever idea to keep people moving! In the end it took far less time to see the display than it did to stand in the queue.
A final attraction was the Traitor's Gate (inside and outside view below). Supposedly for transport of high profile prisoners but possibly also for the royal pontoon.
After the Tower I wandered around and over Tower Bridge for quite some time, visiting the same souvenir shop as last time and taking yet more Tower Bridge photos. I WAS going to go to the new Tower Bridge Exhibition where you can go up into the tower but at the ticket booth found out just how many stairs there would be and retired hurt. My knees are already cranky with me for all the stairs in the Tower of London! Wandered along the Embankment to go to HMS Belfast but they closed at 5.00pm so time to head home on the train again.
Still loving how (it seems) every pub makes such an effort to look attractive - Aussie pubs could learn a few lessons on attracting customers.
The train to brings you out only a short walk from the entry to the Tower of London.
After the huge queues we saw on the last visit to London I was almost able to walk straight up to the entrance. Perhaps not arriving until lunchtime is the key.
I don't know what I was expecting to see really but certainly not the variety of architecture within what is quite a large castle/prison complex. No doubt this was brought about by the age (from around 1066) and therefore large variety of 'owners' with their own individual requirements.
There are a LOT of stairs in the place. Seems like often you walk up 6 stairs then down 4 stairs then up 5 stairs to get to a room. And then there are the tightly winding narrow ones up to other floors or the battlements ...
Another 'Regency' thing I was tracking was that there was a menagerie - numerous animals on display at the Tower of London which people used to visit. The Tower folks have cleverly put wire sculptures of the animals in some of the places where they used to be kept (the poor things).
The Tower has also house the Royal Mint and the Armoury, so there are also displays about these, including this beautifully decorated 24-pounder cannon and gun carriage.
And the two traditionally-uniformed guards
The big-ticket item at the Tower is the display of the Crown Jewels. First, join the 1/2 hour queue to get in ...
No photography allowed inside. Cross the threshold of some very significant vault doors into the main room, where there are several crowns with the jewels removed and 'recycled' into later crowns as well as Consort Crowns (for wives of kings). There is a huge amount of gold items such as sceptres and the largest punch bowl you will ever see, and of course the current Imperial State Crown. They have installed flat travelators on either side of the crown displays, so you stand sideways and get moved sideways to view the crowns. A clever idea to keep people moving! In the end it took far less time to see the display than it did to stand in the queue.
A final attraction was the Traitor's Gate (inside and outside view below). Supposedly for transport of high profile prisoners but possibly also for the royal pontoon.
After the Tower I wandered around and over Tower Bridge for quite some time, visiting the same souvenir shop as last time and taking yet more Tower Bridge photos. I WAS going to go to the new Tower Bridge Exhibition where you can go up into the tower but at the ticket booth found out just how many stairs there would be and retired hurt. My knees are already cranky with me for all the stairs in the Tower of London! Wandered along the Embankment to go to HMS Belfast but they closed at 5.00pm so time to head home on the train again.
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