Hi everyone.

We are exhausted.  Completely and totally knackered, as the English would say.

We’ve had a great couple of days in London, but I am going to have to keep this post extremely short, because we still have to pack for our flight tomorrow morning!  Actually, make that *I* still have to pack….Tel is already in bed, almost asleep!

London is an amazing city, but it is HUGE and it is BUSY.  Huge and busy are not high up on the list of adjectives that either one of us would use to describe our ideal vacation! We’re more of the small village, watch life go by from a cafe or a pub kinda travellers.

As luck would have it, the tube workers were on strike yesterday in London, so we spent a small fortune in money and a large fortune in time sitting in taxis.  But we did manage to see another UNESCO world heritage site, Westminster Abbey.  All of the sovereigns since the 11th century have been crowned there, and that makes it a place of immense cultural and historical importance.  Unfortunately, the Abbey does not allow photos inside the church, but only in the halls surrounding it.  The church is unbelievably ornate, and even though I am not a church person, I thought it was beautiful.

We were also able to visit the Tower of London, another world heritage site here in London. The tower was built shortly after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and took 20 years to complete.  It was built by William the Conquerer, the first king of England, in order to assert his power and also to control the citizens that were not happy with the new monarchy.

Part of the original building are still standing, including “Traiter’s Gate” where prisoners would travel by barge under London Bridge (where the heads of other traiters were displayed as an ominious warning) and into the tower via these gates, to meet their fate.

We were also able to see the “Bloody Tower”, now harmlessly referred to as “Wakefield Tower”.  This is the place where torture took place.   You can still view the torture chambers where prisoners were held, and some of those chambers even contain the graffitti left by prisoners awaiting their fate in the 1500’s!  Three torture instruments were on display:

The Scavenger’s Daughter:

A terribly sadistic piece of equipment that would bend the prisoner’s body in three, with the calves pressed against the back of the thighs and the stomach pressed against the front of the thighs. Guards could usually get confessions, later used at trial, in less than an hour with this device.

The Rack:

In many ways, the opposite of the Scavenger’s daughter.  The prisoner was drawn on the rack, tied at the hands and the feet and stretched until the joints popped out.

It was a fascinating visit, although neither one of us could tolerate it too long due to the large number of school children visiting the tower today!  As with many of the other places in England (and the rest of the UK and Ireland), we were astounded by the history present in this part of the world.  The tower of London is where Anne Bolyne lost her life, after her husband King Henry VIII ordered her beheaded for treason…she entered the tower via Traiter’s Gate, spent her last days in the Bloody Tower, before being beheaded in front of a cheering crowd and having her head displayed on London Bridge.  Ick.  It was also interesting to hear about King Edward V (who was 12) and his younger brother, who were murdered in the tower after their father died as their uncle wanted to become King.  Their bodies were discovered on the grounds of the tower almost 200 years later!

We finished off our time here with a trip to the maritime village of Greenwich, a peaceful and beautiful town 25 minutes down the Thames by boat. Greenwich is the home of the Royal Observatory, where GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) is calculated.  It is also the home of the prime meridan, the separation between the eastern and the western hemispheres.  Of course, Tel and I got the obligatory picture of her in the eastern hemisphere and me in the western!

We’ve had a good couple of days here, but we are TIRED.  London is exhausting, loud, and everyone is always in a rush.  Although it’s beautiful, we both prefer the smaller places!

OK, folks….it is time to close out the blog for this trip and thank you all once again for reading!  We’re coming home tomorrow, and are looking forward to seeing the kids (Bubba and Banana), and to our own bed (after the horrible hard beds here) and to COFFEE (after three weeks of drinking tea!).  Other than that, I think we’d both be happy to travel for a bit longer.

Bye for now, and thanks for reading!

Mel

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