Day Three: Westminster Abby, Tower and Rain

Westminster Abby was a thrill, the Tower of London was a scream,
and the rain in London tends to chill.

I paid my respects to Tennyson, Dickens, Austen (she's not actually buried there), Queen Elizabeth I (I actually got emotional walking by her coffin), Darwin, Kipling, Hardy, Chaucer, Newton, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Handel, and a few others.

We couldn't take pictures inside the Abby, so here are plenty of the outside. The gargoyles are fascinating, no?
(by the way, these pictures were taken by both Jeremy and me.)












The Tower of London bills itself as a scary place because that's where they held prisoners, had a few murders and even had a torture chamber. In fact, when you go down into the "chamber" there is a big sign stating that there were, in fact, very few "known" cases of torture and that after Henry VIII, torture was only used when national security was at stake. Hmmm....What do you think?

In the prisons there were all kinds of markings scratched onto the wall. Most were religious from the Jesuit prisoners held there. Some were names and dates. All were very old.

The crown jewels are also kept there. They were breath taking. You can see a few of them here.

We were fascinated with the "beefeaters" and the guards. Can you guess why they call them "beefeaters"? That armor up in the top right corner is King Henry VII's. He was a large dude.







There was a poster in the tube that said,
"Visit London, visit the world."

It spoke the truth. There are so many cultures represented here. We ate some excellent Indian curry on this day. But we could have had, Turkish, African, French, Asian, Iranian, British and good ol' Kentuky Fried Chicken, if we wanted to.

There is so much architecture, blending the new with the very old. I'm not sure how to feel about the building on the left. The wall on the right is all that's left of a great Roman wall surrounding the city.


And there is rain. Moody, mysterious, mystical rain. On this day, I didn't mind it.