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Published: October 14th 2008
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The Tower of London This morning I got up around 8:30 to shower and eat breakfast before we left for the Old City Tour that started at 11. We tried to buy a tube (Underground) ticket at our hostel but they were taking too long so we decided to try and buy one at King’s Cross. That was mistake, however, because there was an even longer line and I was having a hard time getting it to take my money. After finally getting all of our tickets it was about 5 till 11 and we still had a long ways to go on the tube.
When we first got off the tube station we couldn’t find the group, but when we walked down a few stairs we were thankfully able to find them! Our tour guide this day was very eccentric and made the tour funny. He first took us to the Tower of London. The tower's primary function was a fortress, a royal palace, and a prison. It has also served as a place of execution and torture, an armory, a treasury, a zoo, the Royal Mint, a public records office, an observatory, and since 1303, the home of the Crown Jewels of
the United Kingdom.
We then walked a short distance to get a better view of Tower Bridge and not as impressive but more historical London Bridge. The older London Bridge is now located in Lake Havasu City, Arizona…. Home! We also saw city hall which was a round glass structure, and the HMS Belfast which is one of the two ships forming the final sub-class of the Royal Navy's Town-class cruisers.
Walking along the Thames River then took us to the part of London that burned in 1666 in the Great Fire of London. We stopped to hear its history was by The Monument which is a memorial of all those that lost their lives in the fire, but it was under construction so we could only see the ball of fire at the top. We also walked through parts of London that are still laid out in the medieval style with the buildings very close together.
Afterwards we walked to the City of London and saw the Old London Stock Exchange building and the Bank of England which is what Gringotts Wizarding Bank in Harry Potter was modeled after!
We then walked to my favorite part
of this tour which was St. Paul’s Cathedral which dates back to the 17th century. It was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It was absolutely gorgeous!
We then walked to Millennium Bridge which is a pedestrian-only steel suspicion bridge over the River Thames. It was nicknamed “Wobbly Bridge” after crowds of pedestrians felt an unexpected swaying motion on the first two days after the bridge opened. The bridge was closed and modified, and further modifications eliminated the "wobble" entirely. Across the river from us was the Tate Modern which is Britain's national museum of international modern art containing works of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Naum Gabo, Giacometti, Pop Art, and contemporary art since the 1980s. We could also see Shakespeare’s Globe across the river. This is a reconstruction of the Globe Theater which was built in 1599 by the playing company, Lord Chamberlain's Men, to which Shakespeare belonged (very cool), but was destroyed by fire in 1613.
We then walked to a little community called Temple that houses the Temple Church where some believe holds the Holy Grail. It is a late 12th century church built for and by the Knight’s Templar as their English headquarters. It is featured
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me and the Tower! in The Da Vinci Code.
Finally we ended the tour at the Royal Courts of Justice, sometimes called Law Courts, which also had amazing architecture. It was built in the late 1870s, and is where famous people have gone to deal with legal difficulties such as Paul McCartney’s divorce with Heather Mills.
After the tour we went to a tube station that sold day of tickets to shows that night. We got a good deal on tickets to Chicago for 8pm that night! We then walked around to find a bite to eat, and sat in Soho Park and watched the range of diversity among the people walking by. There were a few guys in dresses and loads of weird fashion that I’d never in a million years see in Ottumwa, or ever expect to see in my lifetime!
We then went back to our hostel to rest and get ready for the show. We left early to eat at a nice restaurant, but it took us forever to find one that was within our price range so we ended up abandoning that idea and eating at an adorable muffin store. We ate around a statue in the
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City Hall middle of a roundabout. Chicago was absolutely amazing, and Kaley, who has gone to about a billion shows in Chicago and one in New York, said she thought the acting, singing, and dancing was the best she’d ever seen. I loved it, because in 8th grade I went through a faze where I was obsessed with the music so I knew all of the songs! The show got out around 10:30 so then we went to a bar called Spice of Life that Cori had been to when she went to London the summer after she graduated. She met a hysterical drunk British guy that talked to us about Michigan and New York, and when talking about the amazing history London had that made it such much different from New York he said, “Well of course, I have a that’s book older than America!” Afterwards we headed back to the hostel with incredibly aching feet, but felling that it was definitely worth the pain!
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