Monday, June 3, 2013

The Two Towers...or four....or six

So London likes its towers. You have Tower Hill, the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London which hosts many more towers such as Martin Tower and the White Tower, not to mention Bloody Tower and there are more.

Today following breakfast we ventured out to Tower Hill. We went to the Tower of London and took a tour. It was really interesting and really old. The history behind a lot of the places there is often disturbing to say the least but parts of it are very beautiful. I then went to see the crown jewels. Some of the stones are so big they look fake. When we had been satisfied by the Tower of London (mind you we didn't see everything there was to see) we headed down to see the Globe which is where William Shakespeare's plays were performed. On the way we saw a lot of different little things like Sir Francis Drake's ship and the last remains of the first fortress built by the romans in London, the Monument and we saw many different angles of the new building the Shard. I saw the London Bridge Hospital from across the River Thames and we crossed over it on London Bridge (not the original) and saw a lot of cute little not really famous places. It was such a great day with lots of walking and some pretty great pictures. Unfortunately the wifi wasn't working at Starbucks when we stopped earlier today so I don't have any to show you today but I'll see if I can get them up tomorrow.

The most disturbing part of today was hearing about all the beheadings (and such) of people, some innocent of the charges brought against them. I can't say that I'm totally against capital punishment and I can't say that I'm totally for it either but what got me today was when people were executed, when they were innocent of the crimes, merely because some "royalty" either wanted to get them out of the picture so they could marry someone else or because they wanted to get back at someone else. The abuse of power and the treating of human life as though it were chattel because you have a title or trying to keep a title makes me angry. The injustice of it all gets to me. After my cup of Organic Kenyan Americano at Starbucks I was able to calm down and enjoy the rest of London.

It was an amazing day though, even with the afternoon at Town of London that made me angry at the loss of innocent life. I saw a lot of beautiful places and I think I got a slight sunburn on my face because the sun was out all day. It was still a bit cool if you were in the shade or wind which made it just about perfect for me.

FYI: If you are looking for cream/half & half for your coffee you won't find any in the whole of London it seems. They have skim and part-skim milk. Whole milk doesn't even seem to be common. I can't see much point in either of the skim stuff so I've taken to drinking my coffee black lately.

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