Finally, the Tower

I finally made it to the Tower of London! I went with Sarah (who I had the pear cider with in Edinburgh), and we spent a good three hours there just wandering all over. The first hour was a guided tour by a Yeoman Warder who kept asking the group trivia questions relating to various things about the Tower, some of them rather tangential. What is funny is that most of the group seemed to be British (when other countries came up he asked for people from there to raise their hands), and though Sarah and I are American, we answered more of the trivia questions (and correctly) than the other people did.

I did not once find a bench and take out a book, nor did I even want to, so go me. I don't know what I was thinking ten years ago, because this really was very interesting stuff. We saw the Crown Jewels, and the Royal Apartments, and the White Tower (the first, central tower), and the Bloody Tower (where Richard III's nephews were), and that bit of Roman wall that's left, and the ravens. I got a lot of pictures of the ravens, because I find the raven legend very interesting.

We stayed almost until closing, which was at 5:30, and decided to go find dinner after that. We'd been talking about Whitechapel and finding a Jack the Ripper tour earlier that day, so we decided to just go to Whitechapel and check things out. Right out of the tube station was a street market, where some of the stalls had some...very strange things, like a crotchless fishnet bodysuit. We were somewhat disturbed by that.

We walked around a bit, looking for a pub, but there weren't that many that sold food and weren't really crowded. We also got the idea that Whitechapel is still not the best of areas in London, and it was starting to get dark, so we decided to look elsewhere for our meal. Today I looked up Jack the Ripper tours and I found a good one with reserved spots for £7, so I'll talk to Sarah and see if she wants to do that at some point with me.

We ended up eating in an Irish pub just down the road from King's Cross, and it had very good food and cider. Mmmm. Definitely remembering that place. While we were there, Sarah got a call from one of her friends in another program who invited us to see a band in a bar by Old Street, so we went there. The band was pretty good. Not my favorite kind of music, but still stuff I'll listen to.

I went home earlier than Sarah did, because they were willing to go on the last tube and bus home, and I didn't want to risk it. I got home just fine, though, and I was very happy to get into the warm. It's been getting colder again, and I wish it would stop that. I am definitely enjoying being here, but I could do with it being a bit warmer.