Tower Tales

We got up early again so we could arrive at the Tower of London when they opened at 9 a.m. Our wake-up call arrived late but we made it to the Tower in good time nonetheless. The morning was overcast but the clouds eventually broke apart to reveal some pretty blue skies. There were not very many people at the Tower at that early hour. We first went to gawk at the Crown Jewels and then wandered about the grounds before joining a talk with a Yeoman Warder. We were the only ones in the audience for the slideshow/talk. We had a choice of subjects: Torture or Life of the Yeoman Warder. JoAnn eagerly chose "Torture". Our lecturer had just recently become a Yeoman Warder and he stumbled a bit on his facts but was a good speaker. After that gruesome lecture we joined a guided tour of the grounds with another Yeoman Warder. He was much more experienced and gave an animated theatrical talk emphasizing the more gruesome aspects of the history of the Tower. By the end of our tour it was lunchtime and we grabbed some sandwiches in one of the dining facilities at the Tower.

We decided to talk a walk along the Thames from the Tower over to Leadenhall Market, taking in some lovely views of Tower Bridge before setting off. Leadenhall Market, a lovely shopping area, was dressed up quite festively for the Christmas season. We browsed about the former Harry Potter (it filled in for Diagon Alley in one of the movies) then hopped on the tube to Knightsbridge, our destination: Harrods. We spent a lot of time wandering through the vast food hall then had a delicious dinner at the chicken rotisserie counter.

Time to head back to the hotel, drop our bags off, rest up a bit, then head back out to Tower Hill again. We planned to join the London Walks' Jack the Ripper tour. Quite a crowd of folks showed up for the tour. There must have been some 30 or 40 of us there. Our tour guide, Don, an established authority on Jack the Ripper, did an excellent job, making sure everyone could both see and hear him. He regaled us with the grizzly details of one of the worlds' most famous unsolved murder mysteries. We visited the spots where most of the murders occurred, though I found it difficult to imagine the Victorian setting as most of the old buildings were gone.