Wow, the British Royalty sure were a bunch of arseholes.

Had a standard English breakfast (or "fry up") across the street from the hostel at a place called the Island. Eggs, toast, ham, sausage, slice of tomato, and some baked beans. Pretty standard fare when it comes to breakfast here. After this began a casual stroll across London Bridge and wandering down the bank boardwalk to the Tower of London. Oddly enough it was quite small compared to the building around it, but I'm sure it was quite impressive back in the day.

The bottom part, where the lawn is located, was the moat area and had a connection to the Thames. Then there is a small castle wall with a taller inner wall beyond that. In the middle of all that is a four story building called the White Tower, where a bunch of kings and queens lived back in the early days of the British royalty. The ruins were built on the Roman ruins when they got conquered by Trajan. Much later on, in 1033, William the Conqueror decided "enough of that rot" and tossed the Romans out at the expense of having bland food from then on. Its still in contest as tot whether that was a good idea, though conquering India helped bring that mysterious thing called "spices" back into the culinary scene.

The tour was filled to the brim with tourists, making even the simplest wait a 1/2 to 1 hour ordeal. I started with an amusing free tour guide with a beefeater. Each beefeater must have 20 years of service in the military and are chosen carefully. So tour guide isn't a bad gig really, add that on their pension and that they get to meet people and tell bad jokes to a captive audience and it all makes it worth it. For about a hour or two I was regaled with tales of this and that person getting their heads chopped off. Priests, kings, queens, authors, etc. They didn't seem to be a cheery lot really. I then stood in a ridiculously long line to be whisked by the crown jewels, which while impressive in their huge jewelly bits, was not worth standing in line for that long.

After this it was a walk through the White Tower in the middle where the longest running tourist attraction was running. There had been suits of armor and mock up horses and wooden mannequins of rulers.The tower used to house and armory, so there was many different sections on the floor shown firearms, cannon, suits of armor, etc. There even used to be exotic animals housed for the visitors than can from the early 1600s to present day. It was interesting but my threshold for dealing with tourists was quickly reached. I took a quick walk around the outer parapets, and had an interesting lunch, before I headed back into town around 5pm.


I walked back just in time to find out that the London Experience closed. I figure I'll hit that first thing, then move on to Kennsington Palace and a walk through Hyde Park and listen to loonies talk about the end of the world.