Day 3 - Off With Their Heads! (and My Feet!)

The plan for the day was to go see the Tower of London. Going into it, I thought the Tower of London was A tower. But no, the Tower is a whole complex of smaller buildings (towers), surrounded by an outer wall. It was a lovely day and we started out going through the old castle which had been built by a father/son set of kings a l-o-n-g time ago and made it to the area where Henry VIII kept his prisoners. We got to see the crown jewels (no photography allowed). And then we had lunch in the cafeteria there.

After lunch, Holly and Haley took the camera and trekked through the "White Tower", so named because they would white-wash it every so often back in the day, and Mom and I found a bench in the sun and enjoyed the breeze. From our vantage point, we were able to see the changing of the guard (yes, I know, not THE changing of the guard, but fun to watch nonetheless!)

After an enjoyable morning and early afternoon, we finished up by getting a close-up view of the London Bridge. Now, THE London Bridge is somewhere in Arizona, of course, but this bridge looked good too. Had there been an elevator, Mom and I would have been game to go to the top and see the sights, but by this time, both of us were pooped.

Fortunately, the next item on the day's agenda was to catch a cruise up and down the Thames River to see London from that vantage point. We boarded our boat and since the weather was nippy, but not too bad, we rode the trip up the river (or maybe it was down... I get confused about that type of stuff) on the top of the boat. The trip included the comedy stylings of the first mate. He was cute and funny, so we gave him a nice tip.

We rode the boat down/up to Greenwich and since we had time before the last boat back, we got off and meandered around. Specifically, we meandered up the world's largest hill to get to the Royal Observatory so we could stand on the Prime Meridian and have a foot in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. I say this is the world's largest hill because I'm pretty sure that the bulk of the 15-ish pounds I lost while on this trip were lost going up the hill. Going down the hill was no picnic either, it was so steep you had to be careful not to pick up too much momentum lest inertia just carry you away! This picture is of the downhill trek, to give you an idea of the incline.

For dinner, we were too tired to make anything, so we stopped at the first of two Chinese places on the street between the flat and the underground station. It certainly was not Yen Ching, but it wasn't too bad. After dinner, we managed to get ourselves back to the flat and put our feet up to plan the next day's adventures.