Terror at the Tower of London: In which our heroines engage in some very touristy & photogenic behaviour in their last huzzah in London before setting out on their Grand Tour.
The Tower of London is just something that every pilgrim to the City of Vice has to do. The only spooky thing about the Tower these days, is how cheeful the busloads of tourists seem as they hand over their ₤16 to see where people died horribily. Often with rats involved. And hacking.
Lots and lots of hacking.
There are other things in the Tower: the Crown Jewels, the Royal Armoury, an over-priced cafeteria, a torture chamber and a church. But really, everyone is there to hear about the hacking.
The reason for this is that unlike most jobs these days, you didn't have to be sober to be on duty as an executioner. As long as you could pick up your axe and swing it (in the general direction of the doomed person was preferable), you could report for duty. And if you didn't knock off their head in the first fifteen tries, they would eventually just die of being hacked into small pieces.
Eventually.
The Traitor's Gate (formerly a water entrance to the Tower) where prisoners of higher rank such as Queen Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas Moore, could be brought discretely into the Tower before being liberated of their cranial burden.
Famous prisoners of the Tower include:
Sir Walter Raleigh: Who practically lived there. After being imprisoned three times (The first was for getting married without asking Queen Elizabeth's permission. The last time was for failing to find the New World and disobeying his only order which was "don't anger the Spanish" by burning and raiding every Spanish ship he could find between here and America), his head was retrieved by his wife who carried it around in a bag around her waist for twelve years.
I don't even know what to say about that.
Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr: (Who was Welsh, if you hadn't guessed) A prince who fell to his death in an escape attempt. Apparently had not heard of the groovy new Greek invention called "stairs."
Lady Jane Grey: The Nine/Thirteen Day Queen who is so important that no one can remember for exactly how long she was on the throne.
Rudolph Hess: German deputy leader of the Nazi party who forgot to appraise the United Kingdom of his travel plans when he parachuted into Scotland with the intent of brokering peace between the two nations without telling Churchill or Hitler about it. Smooth.
Venetian Lions "liberated" from Venice. Apparently they did not want them back. I cannot imagine why.
A Norman toilet. But where does the magazine rack go?
The famous biting ravens of the Tower. If the ravens leave the Tower, the monarchy will fall. Which is a pretty precarious means of establishing governmental stability if you ask me.
My best Anne Boleyn impression
A Yeoman of the Guard (Okay, a beefeater). They are all bluff and cheeky. Just like in the stories but better.
Inner tower with the Armoury and in the wee corner on the left is where they keep the Crown Jewels which are incredibly shiny. And kinda gaudy. They also look incredibly easy to steal. You enter the chamber on a sort of viewing platform which zooms you around the jewels (its kind of like an abattoir without the killing) and into the gift shop where you can by all manner of royal replicas.
The entire structure was conceived by a very cunning capitalist. I salute them.
I would hate to think of the conversation with the interior designer.
"I was thinking florals. Maybe marigolds? Some buttercup curtains?"
"I'm thinking guns.... Lots of guns. More guns. Guns on the walls, guns on the pillars, guns arranged in a circle. Break it up with a wall of swords. Then, some more guns."
"..."
The grotesque war horse statues. Scariest weapon in the entire British arsenal.
Every night the entire tower and its residents are locked up in a complicated ceremony involving a lot of marching and wearing frilly hats which represent the might of the British Empire.
We then headed to the Tate Modern because it was freezing and we needed an hour to kill (which are the only reasons why one should ever visit the Tate Modern).
That which I appear to be tripping over is actually installation art. It's a crack that runs over the entire concrete basement of the Tate and I thought it was pretty cool until I learned that it represented colonialism
Must post-modernism ruin everything?
And thus the day ended as every day should end: With sushi.
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