England 2006
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The Balettie Bunch invade England!
More pictures can be found here in our England 2006 photo gallery.
UK 2006 - Day 2: Towers and Traffic
Part
4 of the England 2006 trip report:
After
a hearty "full English" breakfast at the hotel,
we head to the Underground station, buy our
day-passes, and hop on the Bakerloo line towards
the Tower of London! Kathy and I were there
before, but (again) this one is "for the
children" -- and the weather cooperates for us
beautifully!
The original portions of
The Tower of London were built by William the
Conqueror in 1078. You can read lots of history
here at the Wikipedia Tower of London
page, if you're interested...
We had a really enjoyable
morning touring the Tower, seeing everything we
could... Henry VIII's "impressive" codpiece, the
"Torture in the Tower" exhibit (see 'the rack'
below), the dramatic chapel inside the White
Tower, and more!
There are some absolutely
*ENORMOUS* ravens that are treasured residents
of The Tower. Legend dictates that, if the
ravens ever leave, the Tower will fall and the
Kingdom will fall, so King Charles II decreed
that there must always be at least six ravens at
the Tower. That tradition has been honored for
more than 300 years.
While Andrew started his
quest for cars yesterday, Melanie started her
trend of having her picture taken with...
well... "unique things", and yes... that's a
real (skinny) guy in the Superman costume. For
some reason, he was just *there* having his
picture taken with tourists. Go figure.
Of course, we had to get
our picture taken with the famous Tower
Bridge!!!! Please note, this is *not* to be
confused with London Bridge ("... is falling
down, falling down.")... that's the next bridge
up the Thames and is really quite boring. The
previous London Bridge, of course, was bought
and for some reason moved to Lake Havasu, AZ.
As we waited for our
double-decker bus (yay!), the shade was really
nice... I also saw one of the *best* pub names
on the trip right across from The Tower.
Once we got onto the bus,
we found out that half of our planned route has
been detoured, due to a UK-wide event (a one
kilometer run for some charity) taking place
that afternoon! So... after (literally) wasting
an hour going *VERY* slowly, we hop off, find
the nearest Underground, and head to our next
destinations... Andrew and I were *originally*
going to go to The British Museum, but we ran
out of time, but he had done
some homework on London saxophone stores...
there was one off of Baker Street (of Sherlock
Holmes fame) that was right on our Underground
path back to the hotel, so I gave him permission
to go off on his own and meet us back
at the hotel. Meanwhile, I took Mel and Kathy to
*their* preferred destination for the day -- The
Royal Horse Guards (their massive parade ground
below).
Unfortunately, nothing
significant was going on, so after looking
around a bit, we wandered up to Trafalgar square
(below), then took the Underground back to our
hotel (Andrew was there... whew!), and met our
driver who was picking us up to take us up to
Julian and Jenny's house in the Midlands.
I've known Julian for
over ten years now, and have become very close
friends with him and his family. I've visited
them several times and they've come over to the
States several times, too. He and Jenny have a
*very* cute 2-year old son (Sam), and we're
going to be spending the rest of our England
vacation with them in the "Heart of
England"...
This way for more adventures!!!!!
-or-
... back to the Adventures in England page!
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