Trip Report: Day 4: London

On Monday we set off for the Tower of London first thing. Tudor history is one of my favorite things and I have always wanted to visit the Tower but it didn't work out for various reasons the first two times I was in London. 

I had this bridge as my desktop photo in college!

Most of the Tower of London is very old. I took pictures of the first sign like this we saw, but then it turned out that almost every one of the towers was built in the 1100s.

So old! The Tower had already been there for 300 years when Henry VI died here!

This part in the center is the White Tower, which I've read about in a million Henry VIII books. Today it has a bunch of historical exhibits, including armor of the kings and their horses going back ~400 years.

  
You can also see the crown jewels at the Tower, which were suitably impressive. Part of the exhibit had a moving walkway like in an airport to keep everyone moving along past the cases of jewels. Such a good idea! Most of the crown's treasures were melted down when Oliver Cromwell overthrew the monarchy in the 1600s so unfortunately not too much stuff exists from before that time.

This sculpture marks the spot where Henry VIII's wives died on the scaffold, and a bunch of other people, too.

There is carved graffiti covering the walls inside the towers that were used as prisons.

And the tower most often used as a prison has a great view of the scaffold area, which doubtless was very comforting for people locked up awaiting their execution.

After we finished at the Tower of London, we found a Wagamama and had some noodles and Diet Coke. Then we walked up the hill to begin Rick Steves' East End walking tour, which included Jack the Ripper sites. This is the Ten Bells pub, where one of the victims worked, and Christ Church.

At the end of a little East End street you suddenly come to Brick Lane, the most heavily Bangladeshi area in London. It's very odd how this part of the city changes abruptly from skyscrapers to old tenements to ethnic neighborhoods.

See the hooks on the building? They are tenterhooks! That's where it comes from. Thanks, Rick Steves!

This is what most of the neighborhood looked like during the Jack the Ripper times, according to Rick. Ben pointed out that it looks like an old timey scholar is walking toward us in the photo, but it's just an elderly woman wearing a scarf.

We walked over to Liverpool Station and then took the tube to Mayfair...

...where we located the building in which my mom was born! Today it's a plastic surgery hospital. We went inside and mom talked to the receptionist, who said it used to be a more general hospital back in the day.

That evening we got burgers and went to see Motown: The Musical. I'm not so much a musicals person but this one has lots of good recognizable songs so I enjoyed it. The server at the theatre bar talked me into ordering an entire bottle of wine (it just made good economic sense) so that probably helped.