Old London

Saturday, August 16, 2014
Day 4—Old London

Today, while it was a day made by the Lord, was not made with luck on my side. And yet, I’m in Europe with my best friend, so somehow my day was still a dream come true.

We started the day with our soggy frosted flakes (we are skipping all these awesome nutrients tomorrow morning to sleep in longer) and our crazy, we showered at night and then slept on it so it is everywhere, hair. We got ready and then headed over to Buckingham palace to watch the changing of the guards. We were almost late, and then after waiting until a quarter after, a man walked around and told us that it wasn’t happening today. So that was brilliantly wonky (I’m trying to incorporate British words into my vocabulary because I love them). So, we decided to walk around to the visitor center, where we found out that we could buy tickets to go into some staterooms and gardens on an audio tour of Buckingham Palace (because we are here during high season)! So we bought tickets that we get to use tomorrow, and we are royally pumped!



Morgan and I in front of St. Paul's Cathedral.

We left the palace once we found out that we would be coming back, and decided to go to King’s Cross and the Camden Markets. We took the tube to Kings cross, and bought some coffee which we drank while we waited in line to take our picture at platform nine and three quarters! It was about a 50 minute line, and it was actually the highlight of the day because Mo and I just waited, drank coffee, and talked about our lives. It was a very relaxing way to spend the afternoon after all the non-stop moving and sightseeing that we have done since our planes landed. Plus, at the end of the line, we got to put on a Gryffindor scarf and some glasses, and hold a wand, and get our picture taken at the entrance to the Hogwarts Express! It was amazing. Shortly after that, we decided that we didn’t have time to go to Camden market before our afternoon free tour, but decided to use the bathrooms before we took the tube to the tour. And that my friends, was when the fateful event occurred. I left my phone in the bathroom, and it is now gone forever. And trust me, it really is gone, we spent the next hour exhausting all our resources to get it back. It’s okay, I cried for a moment, and made peace with the reality of my consistent irresponsibility. Life goes on and there are worse things that couldn’t have happened but I did mourn the deep loss of a lot of pictures including ALL of the proof Morgan and I had that we were ever at platform nine and three quarters (it’s okay we’re going back tomorrow).

Anyhow, because of my mistake, we were a little bit late to our tour, BUT we found the group (at the first location), which included, once again, our German friends and our tour guide Sam. The tour began by showing us the building that was used to film Gringott’s bank in Harry Potter. But it’s the Australian embassy so unless we were Australian we wouldn’t be able to get in. Next was the Justice building, which I saw, but I missed most of the talk, so all I know is that it is massive and it is gorgeous, and also old.

Our German friends, John and Manuel

The next thing that we talked about was a statue of a dragon over top of Queen Victoria, which is odd considering that there is a statue in front of Buckingham Palace that displays Queen Victoria underneath an angelic being symbolizing that the only person more powerful than Queen Victoria is God himself. But it was explained to us that the dragon is the symbol for the City of London. The majority of the world believes that Buckingham Palace and Big Ben are in the City of London, but they are actually in the city of Westminster which is in the Greater London area. The City of London (yes, “city of” is a part of its name) became separate when a Frenchman named William the Conqueror became the King of England. None of the people liked him, so in order gain favor, he said that if they supported him and told all of their friends to support him, they could have the City of London and could do whatever they wanted, so they agreed. To this day, the Queen cannot visit the City of London without permission. The City of London has its own laws and therefore, they have lower taxes and somewhat shady business practices. Things that are explicitly illegal in other countries are not necessarily illegal in London. Which is why so many of our large corporations have branches in London. This statue, while it doesn't look like much, actually holds a ton of meaning, the City of London is more powerful than the Queen. 



The next stop was a pub called “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese,” that was built in 1667. This pub was the favorite place of many famous authors and writers. Alfred Lord Tennyson, who drank a pint of port every morning, hung out in the pub often. Charles Dickens wrote about this pub in “A Tale of Two Cities,” amongst other works, and Mark Twain was also a frequent visitor. There was a brothel above the pub and it is believed that that was a part of the draw for these poets. The step leading into the pub has a giant dip in it from over 300 years of drunks stumbling in and out of the building.

We also passed a church called St. Brides. There once was a baker that was asked (by someone wealthy and powerful) to make a whole new type of cake for his daughter’s wedding. The man said he would do it, and then a week before the wedding, the man still had no idea what to do. He went to church at St. Brides and as he was looking to the sky and praying that he could somehow be given an idea. He saw the top of the church, which holds a three tiered steeple with the largest tier at the bottom, and inspiration struck. We now have traditional wedding cakes because of this church.

St. Paul's Cathedral

Later, I will talk about the great fire that destroyed a third of London, but most of you have probably heard a little about it, which is important because the next stop was St. Paul’s Cathedral. The cathedral was built in a year that I cannot remember a long, long, time ago. The top part of the church was initially just a square with a small steeple. In the great fire, much of it was destroyed, and the King (a protestant) wanted it rebuilt. Christopher Rent (we think is how it is spelled) was the architect on the project, and he wanted to build a dome. But domes are very catholic, and the king hated the idea so he told Christopher to build back the spire. Christopher has a vision that he was not willing to let go of, but he knew that the king wouldn’t agree to it, and he was required to get every decision, every change (even the small ones), approved by the King. Also, the king was very old. So, Christopher, being quite cunning decided to change the stones and the windows, multiple times until he annoyed the King and the King finally allowed him to do whatever he wanted. So he started work on the dome. When people started noticing that the building was taking the shape of a dome, they started talking about how angry the King would be. Luckily, the King died, and the heir was Catholic, so we have a dome. Christopher is buried in the cathedral, and his tomb is somewhat boring or plain. However, engraved in Latin on the floor of the cathedral are words that say, "if you want to see the tomb of Christopher Rent, just look around you, "because this tomb and the entire cathedral, echo his work and his achievements.    

The cheese grater that melts cars.

Our tour guide also pointed out several things that he called, “architectural failures.” One was a building that Londoners call, “the cheese grater.” It was a failure because the angle of the building allowed for its reflective surface to melt the cars below. Another one of the failures was a building that was made with three giant wind turbines on top of it. It’s supposed to be a green apartment complex and the wind turbines are supposed to power electricity for the entire building, however, it’s built with the turbines facing north and south when every Londoner knows the wind blows west to east. Therefore, the turbines produce little to no energy, and even when they do they are so loud that the wealthy people living in the apartments call the building manager to have them shut off. Another failure was Millennium Bridge, nicknamed “the wobbly bridge,” because it was extremely shaky when it was first built. When the city found out, they went to the architect, who informed them that it wasn’t his fault because people don’t know how to walk properly. In the end, it was shut down for a year to be reinforced and the reinforcement ended up costing more than it originally cost to build in the first place. The last failure was Tower Bridge. When it was built they made a lift to accommodate for the passage of taller boats. They didn’t want the people to have to wait the three minutes for the bridge to go up and come back down, so they built a set of stairs on both sides and a walkway across the top for people to be able to continue. However, it takes six minutes to go up, come across, and come down, which is double the amount of time it took for them to simply wait. As a result, no one used the walk way and it became a mostly empty place where drug dealers and ladies of the night could hang out and do business. Now it is a museum.

We also walked past Shakespeare’s globe theatre, or at least the remake of it. It burned down in the 19^th century when a show was playing the 1812 overture and also shooting cannons off to emphasize the dramatic parts of the music. Well, inevitably the cannons caught the dry wood on fire and burned the place to the ground. The new theatre is almost an exact replica.



Tower Bridge

As we walked along the river Thames, we passed a series of bridges. Our tour guide pointed at a very plain, bland, and boring bridge made from grey cement. He informed us that the bridge we were looking at was London Bridge, which was confusing because everyone thought that London Bridge was Tower Bridge. Our tour guide told us that it is normal for people to get confused. In fact, he told us about a rich man from Arizona… now pause here and let me tell you that our tour guide Sam, is a total entertainer and he does voices and hand motions while he is talking. For this particular story, our Arizona man had a country accent. Mo and I could not stop laughing because it was so twangy and definitely not an accurate Arizona impersonation. And because our German friends apparently thought that we were a walking comedy show, they LOL-ed when we heard the accent and then said, “No.” Okay back to the story, a wealthy man from Arizona called the London government and asked to buy the London Bridge. So they sold it to him, chopped it up in pieces and shipped it across the Atlantic. Once he got it all the way to Arizona and it was assembled he realized that he had made a huge mistake. The London Bridge was nothing special and the man had clearly intended to buy Tower Bridge.  

We continued along the Thames and stopped to hear about a pirate ship docked on the other side of the river. Apparently it is a ship created to look similar to the one that Queen Elizabeth had Francis Drake sail on to invade and pirate Spanish ships. He was her own personal pirate for hire, and she was in love with him. She basically asked him out on multiple occasions and he always politely turned her down. However, one day he showed up with a wife, and the Queen put him into prison. His prison was in the Tower of London and was actually very luxurious. Later in his life, once he was out of prison, the next King (possibly one of the George’s) hated him and forced him to sail off and find the city of El Dorado. When he came back having never found it, the King executed him.

The Great Fire Monument

One of the last things we learned about was the great fire of London that ruined and destroyed so much precious history. It was all started by a man that owned a bakery in east London. His name was Thomas Fariner (again this was a verbal tour, I didn’t raise my hand to ask the teacher for the proper spelling). It happened on a Saturday when he was all finished for the weekend and decided to go out and drink. He came back home drunk and when his wife asked if he turned off the ovens he just passed out. She unfortunately assumed that they were off. The interesting thing is that once the fire started the government thought that since the winds blew west to east, it would blow east and then fade out. The wind on that day blew east to west and ruined an entire third of the city. There is now a monument erected in memory of the fire and the lives that were lost in it.  



The Tower of London with all the poppies.

We finished at the Tower of London which was beautiful. The gardens surrounding the tower had hundreds of Poppies (fake) to commemorate 100 years since World War 1. Apparently a battlefield, somewhere in England, where many British soldiers were killed mysteriously started growing poppies. So the flowers symbolize the deep loss of the war. The Tower of London was interesting in general though because of all its history. It is an impenetrable tower (or at least it was back in the day) there were three walls surround the castle each was a different obstacle: making it over the first wall was hard enough, but once there you had to make it through a pack of lions to get over the third wall where all of the armed guards were waiting. The Tower currently holds the crown jewels, but has been used for all sorts of purposes. It was used to hold prisoners (more high class, big name prisoners), as well as a torture and execution facility. It was at one time even used as a zoo, and the zoo had a polar bear that was on a chain and got its own fish from river Thames. There is also this weird myth about the ravens at the Tower of London. Apparently the ravens have always loved the tower and have always been there. They are such a staple that the myth remains that if the ravens leave the monarchy will fall. To this day they keep ravens on the property under security to make sure that the monarchy will never fall.

The whole city is full of unbelievable stories like these, and it was great to be able to go on a free tour to hear about each story Sam had for us. However, we were also pretty hungry so trying to be like Londoners, we went to a pub called Sugarloaf. I had a delicious and huge order of fish and chips, and it was amazing. Then we became stereotypical Americans because we went to McDonalds. This time to get diet coke, which was totally worth it!

We took the tower hill station back up to Kings Cross Station to ask one more time about my phone, which they still didn’t have. And then we made our way to our London home. We sat in the lobby for a bit while I told my mum that I lost my phone and to look up hostels for our next location and the weather. All in all, it was an amazing day full of wonderful memories! I am loving my time in London!