London: Day Two

Our second day in London, we went to the famous Tower of London. I was rather surprised to learn that it isn't just a tower, but rather an entire castle, with many towers inside it. I felt kinda dumb about that.

When we arrived, a tour was about to start, so we decided to tag along. It ended up being really fun and interesting! All of the tour guides at the Tower of London are Yeoman Warders who live inside the castle. To become a yeoman warder, you have to be a decorated sergeant major in the British military who has served for at least 22 years.

Not only to you get to live in the castle, but you also get the sweet uniform. Our guide was very funny and good with the children who were in the group; there was one 2 or 3 year old who kept laughing and clapping at everything he was saying, regardless of whether it was funny or not.

There is a legend, dating from the 13th century or some such, which states that if the ravens of the Tower leave, England will fall. To prevent this from happening, the King had 6 ravens put in cages with the their wings clipped to keep them from flying away. That kind of seems like cheating to me, but to this day the ravens are still there.

After an enjoyable morning at the Tower of London, we went for a brief walk along the Thames on our way to St. Paul's Cathedral. Here we are posing in front of the Tower Bridge. This bridge looks much much cooler than the more famous London Bridge. The London Bridge just looks like any regular ol' bridge.

St. Paul's was very pretty and very large. Caitlin wants me to tell everyone that Princess Diana was married there, but I didn't really think that was that important. I'm probably a bad person or something for saying that. Unfortunately, the Anglican church charges money to go inside their most famous places of worship, so we passed on going inside.

Across the Thames from St. Paul's is the Globe Theater. We were hoping to be able to see a Shakespeare play while we were in London, but we came about a week before the season started. Apparently, one can go to plays for about five pounds in Globe Theater if you are willing to stand up the entire time, just like the peasants did back when Shakespeare was alive. That would have been awesome, but we didn't get the opportunity.

Here is the view from the South Bank near the Globe Theater looking back towards St. Paul's Cathedral. The awesome modern-looking bridge over the Thames is the Millennium Bridge, built in 2000. London sure has a lot of famous bridges.

After checking out the Globe Theater, we took the tube to a cupcake restaurant called Hummingbird Bakery. It was very good. Caitlin was excited at how good their decorations were for the cupcakes.

After our afternoon snack, we went to Hyde Park and rented a rowboat so I could row Caitlin around the Long Pond in Hyde Park. It was very fun. Caitlin said she felt like was in Pride and Prejudice. As you can see in the picture, I was enjoying myself as well. I was really bad at it at first, but by the end of our half-hour I sort of had the hang of it.

While we were rowing about, we had the chance to chase some swans around. They were very stately looking, and also much faster than me with my poor rowing abilities. Also, swans are BIG. After our time was up, we walked around Hyde Park for a bit and then had a bite to eat before going back to our hostel. This was probably my favorite day in London, with the Tower of London and the excellent rowboating.