Day 83: More of London

Day two of our London Pass access! As you might expect, we headed out early to maximise what we'd be able to see and do with the pass. After a very cramped peak hour Tube ride (we later discovered that the Northern Line is way over capacity and notoriously so), we arrived at destination #1 for the day: St Paul's Cathedral. Surprisingly, it isn't actually UNESCO listed, so no pressure for doing a video. Just wandered around and enjoyed the ambience - almost as impressive as Westminster Abbey, but in a very different way.

Also found some interesting facts while doing the research for my videos: Westminster is so named to differentiate it from St Paul's (although both originally had different names). Westminster is west of St Paul's which was the main city church in the medieval era, so they literally called it the western ministry to distinguish it from the eastern one in the City proper.

St Paul's is comparatively new, and was only built after the previous cathedral was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Sir Christopher Wren was the architect, and the baroque interior is very different to the Gothic and Catholic buildings we've been used to seeing in Spain, Portugal and France. One treat we enjoyed was climbing the 180-ish stairs to the top of the interior dome - great view! Unfortunately due to restoration works we couldn't go outside to the very top, alas.

Back down and out into the cold where we crossed the river and headed for stop number two: Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We grabbed our tickets for a tour starting shortly and started through the exhibition. I knew going in that it wasn't the original building, and I felt quite cynical about things, but by the end of the tour I'd done a complete 180. Firstly our tour guide was great - very enthusiastic and knowledgeable (probably helped that he was an actor), but he was completely open and up-front that it wasn't the original building, nor was it in the same place as the original.

In fact, it's the third "Globe" theatre, after the first two had burned down - one in Shakespeare's time, the other a couple of decades later. But he went in some detail through all the methods and research that had gone into the new building, and I came away feeling very impressed. As much as possible they've recreated the original building, with a few concessions to health & safety regulations. But in terms of design, materials etc, everything fits with what little is known about the original theatre. It's almost as much of a mystery as Shakespeare himself!

Once we'd finished we spent a bit more time exploring the museum exhibition. Very interesting. Next up it was lunch time - we'd arranged to meet my brother Sean and his girlfriend at Borough Markets for lunch around 1pm, but they were now running 30-60 minutes late. Given what we still hoped to fit into the day, we decided to just grab a quick healthy fast-food lunch, have a brief wander through the markets anyway, then head onwards. So that's what we did.

Final stop for the day was another UNESCO site: the Tower of London. This is a large Norman fortress constructed on the edge of the Thames that was originally built as a palace/fortress, but was eventually used as an armory, a prison and a few other things too. We arrived just in time for a Yeoman Warder tour, which is a 60 minute guided tour of the fortress complex run by a guard (not the guys with the red coats and furry black hats). They're very boisterous, loud and entertaining, which was quite a refreshing change after the tours we'd been on in Spain, often in Spanish!

He took the group of around 50 people around for an hour, pointing out various places of interest and telling stories from the Tower's long and varied history. For example, despite its reputation as a place of imprisonment and torture, only four people were actually executed within the Tower's walls. Executions were of course done in public, on nearby Tower Hill. In fact, three of the four executed inside the walls were women, and two of them were (former) wives of Henry VIII - Anne Boleyn and Anne of Cleeves. Queen Elizabeth I had been imprisoned briefly, but obviously survived.

Another funny story: since it was originally built as a fortress, the first time they brought a prisoner in they didn't know what to do. So they tossed him in the cellar. Unfortunately it was a wine cellar, and the prisoner was a Frenchman, and a monk at that. He cracked open the wine, got his guards drunk, scaled the walls and was never heard from again. So much for the first prisoner! And the last prisoner - Rudolph Hess, Hitler's deputy who flew solo to the UK in 1941 hoping to negotiate peace. Unfortunately for him it didn't work, and he was briefly held at the Tower before being put on trial at Nuremburg.

After the tour we wandered around for a few hours exploring. Other highlights include the Crown Jewels - the sceptres, orbs, crowns and other regalia for the British monarchs. Two of the largest cut diamonds in the world in this room! Amusingly, they put you on a travelator like at the airport in this room so you can't linger very long. Also interesting tours of the armour room where late medieval armour was on show, such as that worn by Henry VIII and others. Did lots of filming too so hopefully we'll get a good video out of it!

Finally at 5:30pm the Tower was closing up and we had to leave. Back onto the packed Tube where we decided on a local dinner at the pub across the road from our apartment (called the Narrowboat). Great food, though the service was a bit slow and a man drinking on the balcony had a poorly-behaved dog that kept barking and winding up Schnitzel. Poor little guy, he's had a boring couple of days asleep in the house on his own! Another early night, having walked 22,000 steps today!Read more