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London Still

Last day in the land of the...tea and crumpets. I don't know.

Let's go!
Tower of London time. 

Which is a rather random medieval castle plonked in the middle of modern London on the Thames. 

Shard right there. 



Moar mid-week mid-winter perks: zero people, zero queues. 



Basically what happened is we found a guided tour and...tagged on at the end. 

The leader was a very enthusiastic, very knowledgable and free! (for us). 


This is the exact spot where prisoners were executed - yes, all Henry VIII's wives and everything. All their names around this - a sculpture that was installed several years ago to commemorate what happened here.

I think it's butt ugly.

Remember what I was saying before with modern London having very little architectual taste? Well - this! Honestly, what the shit.

Yes, aqua blue glass, people's names in Times New Roman around the edge and a literal head-catching cushion yes what a touching, subtle tribute to the most influential and fascinating periods of history in one of the greatest nations in the history of the Earth yes good. 

Crown Jewels time! In summer apparently the queue is over an hour long, so go team!

Guard doing his guard-y things. 


Made me think of what he'd do if he tripped doing his march-y thing.

I am a terrible person. 

So obviously you can't take any pictures of the bloody jewels, but you know. They were sparkly. Very pretty. Very large. A completely gross show of wealth, really. The only nice one with any kind of taste was the crown/diadem/tiara whatever they all have different names of the late Queen Mother.

There was also like the biggest diamond ever found in India on Queen Victoria's plate of glory or something; we asked our newly adopted tour guide and he basically confirmed that pretty much yes it had been stolen from the colonies and it'd be kind of awkward to give it back so pillaging, racism and disease, hurrah.





Juxtapositions.

This top series of towers held several informative exhibitions. There was one about how the Tower was practically a (extremely unsafe and abusive) zoo during the 1800s, which was only closed down when one too many Londoner was mauled to death by a lion. 

One was a photography installation (that accompanied the beautiful river of red poppies around the Tower that had pretty much just been dismantled, pooh) commemorating 100 years of the First World War with soldiers training at the Tower then and now.







That there's the Bloody Tower. It was originally called the Garden Tower, but in genuine British tradition, too many people were tortured, bludgeoned, poisoned, thrown off and just generally killed there so over time it acquired a more accurate title. Most notably, it's believed two young princes - heirs to the throne - were murdered here in the late 15th Century. A short time later, their uncle was extraordinarily conveniently crowned as King Richard III.

You have one guess after whom Evil King Richard in the Robin Hood stories are about. 





OKAY SO. 

LISTEN UP EVERYONE. 

AFTERWARDS YOU GO OUT TO SEE LONDON BRIDGE.

RIGHT?



WRONG.

ABSOLUTELY F*CKING WRONG.

SO, SO, SO, SO WRONG.

THIS THING HERE IS CALLED THE TOWER BRIDGE.

Which makes some sense, I guess, like it connects to the Tower of London like okay fine. 


BUT. 

NOT ONLY HAVE I BEEN LIED TO MY WHOLE LIFE ABOUT THAT BEING THE LONDON BRIDGE.

ALL FALLING DOWN AND SHIT MY FAIR LADY.

NOT ONLY THAT, BUT THIS, THIS IS THE ACTUAL BRIDGE ENTITLED "LONDON BRIDGE":

WHAT THE FUCK. YOU DIDN'T EVEN TRY. 

/takes a leisurely walk down the Thames with a large Starbucks hot chocolate to recover from betrayal/



Well. You know what can fix this? A trip to The Globe Theatre! Hurrah!

All the phrases, sayings, plays on words that Shakespeare invented. Pretty amazing when you see it all like this. 

So, tour. 

Seems like if you are a struggling actor in London, one of your day jobs can be giving tours around the Globe! Which beats the local Tesco's, I guess.


Our excellent guide. (on reflection the above comment was extremely bitchy. Imma keep it in, tho)



In summer it's used a lot obviously - you can get 5 quid tickets and stand just like that for several hours squished in - productions go on, rain hail or shine. Would love to do that one day. Toilet, tho. Hm. 

The ceiling is painted as heaven, and the trapdoor on the stage is hell. 



Further along the Thames is Borough Market which is kind of a foodie's dream. So, my dream. 

Mulled cider, pls. 

Yesss. 

Outside market served lunch from all around the world. 







Considering it was nearly 3pm, we had a little bit of daylight to see one last thing.

Oh, yes. 
Hurrah!

So no one told me Holmes had a super hot doorman. 

This was not the last unexpected thing about 221B Baker Street, as the 'museum' was in fact made of a very cliché, cooky 'souvenir' shop...

What. 

What what. 


What what what. 
What what what what. 

Gale summed it up nicely: 




Didn't stop us from trying on dem hats tho.







That bottom section is just the shop - purchase a ticket and you can go upstairs to see where Holmes and Watson lived!!11!!11 (Gale declined)

Up creepy stairs. 

First floor was alright. Set out like Holmes and Watson's "loungeroom" which was nice.

Hurrah!







Go up one more level, and shit starts getting weird. 

So besides some nice antiques and getting to 'see' Sherlock's house, what would you expect in a Sherlock Holmes museum? Information on Arthur Conan Doyle? Historical records? Original copies of the papers/books? Accounts of how it was received, how the fandom grew? What it means to people? What Doyle himself thought of his creation?

No! Don't be silly. You get bizarre fake 'souvenirs' from Sherlock's stories!

Here, the actual thumb from The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb, and the Real Mask used in the Adventure of the Yellow Face!


You get to sign in a guest book!

AND ALSO WALK THROUGH CREEPY ASS WAX 'CHARACTERS' FROM THE STORIES JUST HANGING AROUND. 

WHAT. 

THE.

SHITTY SHITTY BANG BANG. Apparently this is ""Moriarty"".

And this is ""Irene Adler"" ??? 

Hey, Moriarty.

There was also a kind-of-sweet note board filled with (mainly modern Sherlock show) notes.


Yes good. 


Bye, Sherlock.

Later that evening Lizzie and I went out for a drink with her sister Bella. Showed us an old cellar where they only sell wine by the bottle. Also good. 



In other super fun news that happened that evening, we found out a terrorist attack was just carried out in the place we were going to the very next day - Paris.

There's no need to go into any detail about the Charlie Hebdo attacks or what ensued politically, culturally, socially - I'll only add that there was much panicking from various people back home and that we made the decision to keep on track with our plans. 

Walking around with Bella however, we found the first of many, many global movement of support for the victims already gathering in Trafalgar Square. 








Going back to our apartment for the last time - I was pretty excited about catching a double decker. 



Hurrah!


Next morning: TO PLATFORM ONE AND THREE QUARTERS!




Actually not really, because where the Eurostar leaves is absolutely nowhere near where the metro trains are, but it's still Kings Cross station, so all good. 

(also kind of a lie - it's actually St Pancreas because it's so massive it's kind of two giant stations merged together)

(also another lie - it's St Pancras but come on who ever reads that words without saying 'pancreas' in their head)

Jusqu'à la prochaine fois...



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