Ingolds in Europe

Today was… chilly… Like, toe numbing, hands fumbling, not sure if I need to use the bathroom because my organs seem to have shut down kind of cold. A local guy we met went to the shops in a lightweight T-shirt and told us the locals were all so excited that Spring weather definitely was almost here. He said he drove to work today with his window down it was so lovely.
So we decided to make the most of this lovely-almost-spring weather and explore the Tower of London. With many layers on.
We jumped into a walking tour with a beef eater (one of the famous guards of the tower) who was both impressive in knowledge and quite hilarious when he was depicting rather gruesome things (nothing like Queens being beheaded and their heads paraded around town for a good laugh…) Olive was horrified and we had to take her away from the stories for a little while to calm her down. Trouble was, every place in the towers have dark dungeons, suits of armour, shackles and more tales of gruesome murders. So it eventually became a little like conditioning with immersion, and she eventually joined back in. Audrey on the other hand toddled happily behind the beef eater for the entire hour, happy as Larry engrossed in his woeful tales of medieval torture 🤣.
One of our favourite parts was the Crown Jewels. Enter through a MASSIVE vault door and what can only be described as an incomprehensible amount of jewel laden magnificence was inside. One diamond that is centerpiece for one of the royals crowns (I lost track of what belonged to who…!) was 552 carat. Yep. ONE diamond.
Interestingly, some of the jewels (so big and impressive they have their own world famous names) were captured from other royalty when the British invaded and took control of their countries. Food for thought on the irony of putting that front and centre in a crown… 🤔
The only 2 crowns that were missing were the ones that were being resized for the upcoming coronation for Charlie and Camilla. Not sure if they needed to be up or downsized 😉😉
The girls learnt how to read Roman numerals today (win for the lack of current schooling), and I learnt that I barely know any English history (after school aged kids yelled out answers like ‘Simon the conqueror’ and ‘the battle of Zinfandel’ when the beef eater asked questions relevant to what he was talking about… and PS I made those names up 🥴)
After all that Royal murdering and bloodshed we were hungry. We toddled over the tower bridge (note, NOT the London bridge) into what I had always imagined a quaint English pub to be. After a confused start (the Barman was almost started at the sight of us and seemed even more startled when we asked him if we were able to have lunch here) we ordered a pint (half for me) of some beer I’ve never heard of, and sat and played checkers with the girls until the kitchen opened at 1 (???? What lunch starts at 1).
Totally worth the awkward start- the Barman was lovely (once he’d recovered having customers that weren’t his regulars) and the waitress was a beautiful cockney- speaking London lass that was so delightful she almost sat and had lunch with us. The only other table was a man and son who chimed in on the conversation introducing himself as ‘I’m Barry (can’t remember his name… I was onto my 2nd beer by this stage…) From Essex and I have a son in Sydney. I drink 150 lashes on tap when I’m over there visiting.
Well Barry, welcome to the family mate.
It was so fabulous, and exceeded all my imagined hopes for a great little English pub with quirky locals.
We walked all the way back to the hotel (a fair trek), and the girls had another turn on the hurl-inducing merry go round. Audrey proudly chose the horse who’s name was John… and randomly kept yelling out ‘here’s Johnny’ as she scootered past us 🤦🏼‍♀️
All in all, a quirky, cold, but great day.Read more