Monday - May 6, 2019My day started off (and in retrospect it made more sense to do it like this anyway) with the
HMS Belfast. Since I bought the IWM membership at the Churchill War Rooms admission was free. There is an audio guide (the kind I had to hold to my ear) which leads you throughout the ship. The audio guide was very in depth and informational without being too dry. I unfortunately got held up by some dumb parents with little kids who ignored the warnings not to bring small children to certain parts of the ship. Other than that I thought it was excellent.
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HMS Belfast-Silver Bell
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HMS Belfast-Things You Can and Cannot Be Helped With By Your DO
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HMS Belfast-Laundry- Even back then Amazon ruled all
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HMS Belfast-Color Map
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HMS Belfast-Use of Safety Lamps Sign from 1916
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HMS Belfast-Sick Bay Stretchers
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HMS Belfast-Naafi Canteen
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HMS Belfast-Shell Room
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HMS Belfast-A-Turret
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HMS Belfast-Fo'c'sle - Forcastle
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HMS Belfast-Bridge Wireless Office (BWO)
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HMS Belfast-Tower Bridge - from HMS Belfast
From the HMS Belfast I made the short walk to the
Tower Bridge. There was kind of a big line, which was frustrating because it had gotten quite chilly and on the bridge it gets kinda windy, but the wait was short (at least shorter than when I left). The Tower Bridge had a combo ticket with the Monument to the Great Fire of London of 1666, and I bought that. You take an elevator up to the walkway, walk from the north side to the southside, then walk back on the other walkway. There are sections of the walkway that have glass floors so you can see the bridge below and while I was up there, the bridge was being raised. Unfortunately it meant there were so people crowding around the glass that not only could I not see, I couldn’t even walk by. I was able to see the bridge going down as I squeezed through, just to walk through.
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Tower Bridge-Bridge Closing
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Tower Bridge-Inside South Tower
You have to walk to the Tower of London end of the bridge to go to the engine room, which while no longer operational, has a small exhibit and you can see the engines (one of which is running but not doing anything).
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Tower Bridge-Engine Room
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Tower Bridge-Engine
After the Tower Bridge I made the quick walk over to the
Tower of London. When I’d heard about the Beefeater tours, I thought they took you around the whole tower. While I was somewhat disappointed about that, I still enjoyed the tour.
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Tower of London-Beefeater
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Tower of London-Traitors’ Gate
After the Beefeater tour, I went to the Beauchamp Tower which has an exhibit on prisoners and the marks (graffiti) they left on the tower.
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Tower of London-Graffiti in Prison Towers - Thoms Peverel, 1570
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Tower of London-Graffiti in Prison Towers - Shield of the Ashfield Family
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Tower of London-Graffiti in Prison Towers - Willem Tyrrel, 1541
After the Beauchamp Tower I went to see the Waterloo Barracks to see the Crown Jewels. As I was about to go in they started the changing of the guard which I caught a piece of.
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Tower of London-Changing of the Guard at the Crown Jewels
I noticed that one guard had his gun in his left hand and the other had it in his right, I assume that’s because one is right handed and the other left handed, but I never noticed it anywhere else.
After the Crown Jewels I went to White Tower which contains the Line of Kings (statues of Kings in armor and on horses), and the Royal Armouries.
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Tower of London-King Henry VIII
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Tower of London-King Henry VIII
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Tower of London-Prince Henry
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Tower of London-Spears.
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Tower of London-Jewelled Pistol
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Tower of London-Dragon Made of Weapons
After the White Tower I went to the Mint, which has an exhibit on the Tower of London’s function to mint coins.
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Tower of London-Edward I Half-Penny, 1279
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Tower of London-Various Coins
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Tower of London-Charles II Petition Crown, 1663
I certainly didn’t see everything there was to see at the Tower of London, but I think I got a large chunk of it done. After the Tower of London I walked to the
Monument to the Great Fire of London of 1666. Because I thought I hadn’t walked enough, I used the combo ticket from the Tower Bridge and climbed the 311 step spiral staircase to the top, where there’s a fenced in (after some people fell/jumped) viewing deck. Unfortunately there isn’t much of a skyline in London so there isn’t really much to see. You can get much better views from other places and this is something that can easily be skipped. While the walk up was painful, I found the walk down much harder because I was petrified of falling down 311 steps. Going up, if you fall, you’re likely to fall forward and while it would hurt, you’re likely to stay put. If you fall going down you’ve got a long way until something is gonna stop you from falling. The worst part was I kept looking to see how much further I had until the bottom and I’d see white, thinking it was the floor on the bottom, but it was actually just the walls lower down, the floor is actually black.
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Monument to the Great Fire of London-Cheese Grater Building
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Monument to the Great Fire of London-Tower Bridge
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Monument to the Great Fire of London-HMS Belfast
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Monument to the Great Fire of London-London “Skyline”
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Monument to the Great Fire of London-Stairs
Since I was leaving London early Tuesday morning I had decided to stay at the airport, and I didn’t wanna schlep all the way out to GG or Hendon for dinner and then come back downtown to get my stuff so I decided it would be fitting for my last night to go to Rubens. I get there after some delays on the Tube, and they’re closed. Uh oh. I figured maybe since it was a bank holiday, maybe they thought there wouldn’t be enough working people for it to be worth opening. I found out 2 days later, nope, they just closed. Just my luck. Now I really regret not having gone my first night in town when I settled for DDs sandwiches! I then headed back to the London Master Thread to figure out what restaurant was closest to downtown, and settled on Deli 98. Where I got a pulled beef sandwich and lunch for Wednesday. The pulled beef was delicious.
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Deli 98-Pulled Beef Sandwich
I went back to my hotel to pick up my stuff and headed by tube to Paddington for the Heathrow Express. Things were going fine until I switched at Baker St (where I’d been only hours earlier when I tried to go to Rubens) and there was a delay. I waited 10 mins, 15 mins, 20 mins until there was finally an announcement. There was a signal problem and they were working on it. 20 mins later, they say they don’t know how long it will take to fix and you should take alternate transportation. Unfortunately for me, there are no other Tubes that go from Baker St to Paddington, finally, they made an announcement that for Paddington, you should take the 18 bus. Google maps disagreed and I caught a bus and finally got to Paddington, took the Heathrow Express and after a short bus ride made it to the
Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport.
I checked in and when I got to my room the lights wouldn’t work. I tried every single switch in the room and nothing worked. I went back to the desk and told another associate (not the one who’d checked me in) that the lights didn’t work. She said “didn’t you put the key in” I said, “Of course, how else would I have gotten into the room.” She then told me that apparently in many European hotels you have to put your room key in this little box near the bathroom to activate the lights. Now I can’t say I’ve been to a lot of hotels in Europe, but I’ve been to a few and I’d never heard of that. I went back to my room and sure enough, it worked.
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Hyatt Place Heathrow-Bed
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Hyatt Place Heathrow-TV
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Hyatt Place Heathrow-Sofa
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Hyatt Place Heathrow-Bathroom Sink
I was getting up super early for my flight to MXP, so I turned in early.