Royal London

Friday, August 15, 2014

Day 3--London

Today was a very busy day! Our day started bright and early when around 3:00am some girls entered our shared room at the hostel, and one of them almost died. That’s a bit dramatic, but in my half-awake, sleepy state, it sounded like she might die. She was coughing extremely loud, she might have been throwing up, but she also couldn’t catch her breath, it was terrifying.

Once we actually got up, we ate breakfast at our hostel (which was soggy frosted flakes in whole milk, and a very tasty piece of toast), and then headed to the underground to be at the free tour of Royal London by 11am. When walked out from underground and stepped onto the street, we were literally directly in front of Big Ben, which I was not prepared for so I almost cried. Then we walked about 100 feet and met our tour guide (named Linton, from Australia, and holding a bright orange umbrella) at the Winston Churchill statue in Parliamentary Square. This tour was completely free and completely amazing. I’m going to write what I learned about each famous landmark starting with Big Ben.

Big Ben

Big Ben: Please notice the Constable's

The clock tower is actually NOT named Big Ben, it’s actually called Queen Elizabeth the Second’s Tower, and up until 2012 when the Queen celebrated her diamond jubilee (60 years on the throne) it was named St. Stephen’s Tower. The name Big Ben came to be because when they were building the tower, the guy that was in charge of the bell (which weighs 4 tons) was named Ben. He was a very large man, so when the reporters all showed up for the opening of the tower, and Ben was leaning on the bell, someone said, “Ben you’re as big as the bell.” They all published headlines of the tower opening that said the words, “Big Ben,” and the name has stuck since.

Parliament Building

It was here that I learned all about Guy Faux day, you know, “remember, remember, the fifth of November…” This whole thing with the dolls and the fire began when the ruthless and disliked King James woke up one day and decided that the new Church of London was going to be Protestant instead of Roman Catholic, and also that he would be the head of the Church, oh and that all that continued to be Roman Catholic would be persecuted. Obviously people were upset. So a group of radicals formed and decided to blow up parliament on November 5^th, because it was the day that parliament opened and all the important people would be in one room together, including the King. So this group of about 14 radicals rented a room below and little by little they rolled in loads and loads of gunpowder. The planned would have worked too, but one of the men got cold feet because his brother in law got an invitation to come to the ceremony. The man sent his brother in law a letter warning him not to go, but the letter freaked the man out and he took it to King James. Once they got the letter, they searched the building and found poor old Guy Faux, whose job it was to sleep there overnight and light the cannons the next day and then run like mad, sleeping in the room. They arrested him, then tortured him for other names which he gave them. Then, one by one, they were all hung, drawn, and quartered. Hung, well we know what means. Drawn means that the executioner drew a smiley face on the tummy, let all the guts fall out, and then he would reach in and tear out the heart, hold it up to the crowd and say “this is the heart of a traitor,” and everyone would cheer. Lastly, to be quartered meant that each of your limbs was tied to a separate horse and then the horses all ran in a different direction and limbs were taken to the four main cities, to let everyone know how traitors were treated. Guy Faux was executed last, after having to watch all of his friends, but he got the idea that once the noose was around his neck he would run and jump off the platform and kill himself, so he did. But that mad the King angry because he wanted Guy Faux to pay. So he decided to throw a giant party in the center of London with a big bon fire, where they threw his body in and watched it burn. To this day, they all celebrate Guy Faux day and they have bon fires and make little guy faux dolls that they throw into the fire.

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

Here I learned that you can get in for free if you go to a 5pm church service. You can’t really walk around, but Morgan and I went and it was very, very, cool to experience! The tradition and liturgy are amazing to see in such an iconic church. Most days, the famous Westminster Boys Choir sings, however today they did not (which was slightly disappointing). It was still amazing though, to hear the choir sing, and take communion in the place where so many famous people are buried, as well as where so many Royal events, weddings, coronations, baptisms, and funerals, have taken place. We got to see the coronation chair as well, which has been used for every coronation since 1308.

Central Methodist Church

This building, though it’s much less famous than some others, is where the very first United Nations meeting was held, as well as where everyone signed the U.N. agreement. Many famous people have spoken there as well, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, and many more.

Churchill War Rooms

When we stopped at the war rooms, we learned all about Winston Churchill and his crazy sense of humor, his drinking problem, and his leadership of London at a time when being led and encouraged was crucial to survival. During World War II in an event known as the Blitz where the Germans attempted to take London by fighting in the sky. The war rooms take you into his bunker turned museum and I have heard that they are amazing (but I’m poor so I learned all about it on the FREE tour instead of going inside)!

While we were sitting near the war rooms, we learned all about the reign of Queen Victoria, who was the leader of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, back when the British Empire ruled about one third of the world. We also learned that she was on the throne for 63 years, the longest in history. If Queen Elizabeth II can hold out for two more years, when she is 90, then she will hold the record at 64 years.

On our way to Buckingham Palace, we learned about Clarence house and the flags and crowns on the roof of every royals house, Downing Street (where the Prime Minister always lives), and Margaret Thatcher “The Iron Lady,” a nickname she got from the Russians, and her dramatic economic changes.

Buckingham Palace

Tomorrow we are going to see the changing of the guards, but today we heard two very cool stories about the Palace itself. Starting with, and I’ll keep this short, the fact that the palace was originally build as a private residence by an egotistical man named the Duke of Buckingham. He built a house much bigger than the King’s palace (which we also went to and is not extravagant at all, it was actually originally built but Henry the eighth as a hunting lodge) and then invited the King to a party where the King forced him to sell his house to the Royal family. They allowed him to live out the rest of his life there before the royal family, starting with Queen Victoria, began to live there. The second story is much longer, but let’s suffice it to say that a drunk Irishman decided he wanted to go into the palace, so he walked around, found an open window on the first floor, climbed in and started running around the castle as fast as he could seeing as much as possible before getting caught. Well as the alarms were going off, he was still running, and the guards heard the alarms but couldn’t find anyone or any open windows at all. So they assumed it was an alarm malfunction and went back to bed. Once the Irishman realized that no one was coming, he relaxed a bit, and then ended up in Queen Elizabeth the Second’s bedroom, he woke her up and had a chat with her before the guards finally came in and arrested him. He only got charged with stealing a bottle of wine.

St. James’ Palace

This is the palace that the royal family had prior to Buckingham Palace (the one that was originally supposed to be the hunting lodge for Henry the VIII). It is very old and pretty small and crappy compared to Buckingham Palace, which is why the King forced the Duke to sell the house in the first place.

Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square is a very historic and busy part of Central London. In the square are four pillars, one at each corner, and three of them have a statue of gold on top of them. The fourth pillar does not have a statue because they ran out of money when they were building the pillars. The fourth pillar stayed empty for a really long time, until the National Gallery got it approved to put different art exhibitions on top of the last pillar. They have had all sorts of art on top of that pillar, even live art. Right now, the pillar displays a giant rooster. Apparently the artist that created this rooster was tired of all the nude photos and advertisements that she has seen all over London and Europe (those feminists always stirring up trouble), and she wanted to even the playing field. So she petitioned the board or the London government to find out if she could put up on the pillar a male genital. They said no but that they liked the idea. So, she decided to put up a giant, blue, rooster or cock as they are also called, to symbolize her feelings about the objectification of women. The other interesting story about Trafalgar square is centered on the tall pillar in the middle of the square that holds the statue of Admiral Nelson. He was a Naval Commander and National hero. However, each of his major victories came at a serious personal cost. In one of his victories, he lost his eye. His greatest victory was his defeat of the combined Spanish and French ships, where he lost zero of his own ships and destroyed thirty of theirs. This victory, however, cost him his life. Typically, a man that died at sea, was also buried at sea, but because he was a National hero, they had to get his body all the way back to the King. SO, they preserved his body in a crate of rum. Oddly enough, when they pulled their ship into the docks and opened up the crate, the rum was gone, and aside from the body the crate was empty. When they asked the men on the ship what had happed they were told that the men had tapped open the crate and drank all the rum, because they believed that it would bring them the luck of their dear Captain Nelson (somehow I doubt they got anything out of it except for disease). There is now a brand of rum called Captain Nelson, and I believe their product is more sanitary than the original!

After the tour we got an extremely good deal on a meal at a pub with our tour guide and all the people that were on the tour in Soho. We made friends with two Germans, named Jon and Emanuel, who told me how to pronounce my last name, and SURPRISE they said it correctly, but with an extra throaty “oh” at the end. The pub was also very cool, there were quotes all over the walls and ceilings and there was a row of antique TV’s above the bar that were all playing vintage cartoons.

After the meal, we headed over to Westminster Abbey to attend the five o clock service. On the way we bought some McDonalds ice cream in one of the fanciest McDonald’s I have ever seen! Anyways, the service at Westminster was an absolute treat! The choir was beautiful, and the way the sounds echoed all around us, I know that I talked about it earlier, but it truly was a powerful thing to experience.

During our service at the Abbey.
This is a screenshot from a video I took
of the choir.

After the service, we took the tube to the other side of town to meet for our next free tour that started at 8pm. We were a little early so we stopped in this cute little park across form the Tower of London that had very unusual playground equipment. One thing at the playground, was a circle of eight wooden pieces that each had a spring underneath, so it sort of worked like an ancient trampoline. Morgan and I, I’m certain, look extremely strange jumping around in circles on this toy. I mean, to the untrained eye, we appear to be grown adults, so we must have looked silly.

After our time being children, we walked to our Jack the Ripper tour, which was quite an adventure. Our German friends were there again, and the tour took us around to different locations in East London where Jack the Ripper (could possibly have, potentially maybe, in a place that looked somewhat similar) killed his victims. I’m only joking because many of the places where his victims were killed were destroyed in “the blitz” so instead we visited places that were “similar” to his murder sites. Regardless, it was (and I know this sounds a bit weird) a very fun time. Our tour guide, Sam, was an amazing storyteller with TONS of energy. It was also neat to experience the east end of London which has always been the less wealthy and more dangerous side (a place we wouldn’t have visited otherwise), but still holds a ton of old buildings and streets that make it easy to picture the olde days extreme poverty, orphanages, brothels, and poorage (real Oliver Twist type of stuff)! At the end of the tour we discussed all the potential suspects. There are so many insane ideas and theories about who Jack the Ripper was, Montague the doctor’s son with psychological problems, the man known as leather apron, a wild orangutan (that one is nuts), the free masons, and even Prince Edward, are all popular ideas. Morgan and I were a tad disappointed that we came all the way down to the free tour and paid all that money (ooh wait) just to hear suspects and guesses!?! We really wanna know who this guy is, and why he stopped killing… there are just so many unanswered questions.

After the tour we stopped at a delicious pizza chain in the area, where we ate dough balls and shared a pizza. Then we caught the train back and stayed up way too late trying to keep up with our journals/blogs, which is extremely hard when you have such eventful days, I mean I know none of you back home understand, but trust me it’s hard. In all seriousness though, I hope that this wasn’t boring to read, I hope instead that it was enjoyable and educational. Thanks for reading, and goodnight, or good morning!