{"id":138,"date":"2012-06-19T02:17:19","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T07:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/?p=138"},"modified":"2012-07-09T00:52:01","modified_gmt":"2012-07-09T05:52:01","slug":"the-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/?p=138","title":{"rendered":"The TOWER!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, June 18th<\/sup><\/p>\n

Busy day today!\u00a0 Our main focus of today was the Tower of London.\u00a0 We took the tube over, just a short ride, though it was crowded.\u00a0 Serves us right, I suppose, for going during what is probably here peak commute.\u00a0 I think that if we had gone at 9 in the US, the majority of the rush would be over.\u00a0 Not here, though.\u00a0 We arrived a bit too early for the Tower opening, so we decided to go for a walk while we waited.\u00a0 We went over Tower Bridge, which is very pretty, and down the side of the Thames, which is less so.\u00a0 We were trying to decide whether it was high or low tide (it was lowish), and happened to walk past a replica of the Golden Hinde, which was Sir Francis Drake\u2019s ship.\u00a0 It\u2019s up on dry dock at the moment, and they were doing some mysterious but extremely loud something to it on the far side.\u00a0 Kevin and I have surmised that they were blasting the barnacles off, or something.\u00a0 In either case, it looked quite piratical, and at the same time, very silly, because it\u2019s quite bulbous below the waterline.\u00a0 Can\u2019t imagine 100 people living on the ship for any length of time.\u00a0 WAY too small for that kind of thing.\u00a0 We wandered around a bit more, and then decided that it was time to head back towards the Tower, so we crossed back on the London Bridge, which is unspectacular, but it\u2019s nice that there are so many bridges.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to go far, that\u2019s for sure.<\/p>\n

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The Tower from the river side<\/p><\/div>\n

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Looking down the river toward London Bridge.<\/p><\/div>\n

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On Tower Bridge<\/p><\/div>\n

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From Tower Bridge, you could see the walled- up entry to Traitor’s Gate (dun dun DUN!)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Tower Bridge, and a rather overly dramatic sky.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Aww!<\/p><\/div>\n

The Tower was really great.\u00a0 To anyone planning a visit \u2013 buy your tickets online, and no one even asked for a student ID.\u00a0 Just saying.\u00a0 The one place that did ask, had no problem whatsoever with my totally out of date grad student ID.\u00a0 We headed straight for the White Tower when we got inside, as there was a tour thing we were interested to catch.\u00a0 There was momentary confusion as we asked for the tour meeting place (\u201cChapel, on the first floor\u201d) and ran out of first floor before finding a chapel.\u00a0 Luckily, we remembered that first floor does not in fact mean \u201cthe floor first to the ground\u201d here, but \u201cfloor that is first above the ground floor\u201d, so we got there in time.\u00a0 Our tour was a mostly private tour (just because no one besides us an two other people showed up, even though there were plenty of people around), so our guide Jennifer got to show us a lot of cool stuff.<\/p>\n

So, the White Tower is the oldest bit of the Tower of London.\u00a0 It was built on top of the foundations of an existing Roman fort, and was a living space, but was also definitely defensive, as its builder had enemies foreign, domestic and related.\u00a0 The tower was apparently built by people who did not speak the same language as the people they were building it for, so in the chapel there are some interesting details that scholars have interpreted as instructions to the builders \u2013 this is a chapel, make it pretty, that sort of thing.\u00a0 There are also a lot of details about the building that are designed to make it more fortified.\u00a0 One that Jennifer showed us were the fireplaces.\u00a0 They have a very odd chimney shape, which is intended to filter the smoke through smaller and smaller channels, so that by the time it gets to the outside, it would be nearly invisible to enemies.\u00a0 They would look for a sign that the king was home, see no smoke and move on, that style of thing.<\/p>\n

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Secret fireplaces of secret! oooh…<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the other things that I thought was really interesting was the main staircase.\u00a0 It was a fairly small spiral staircase, but one of the things they did to make the castle even more impenetrable was that all of the stairs are different heights.\u00a0 They\u2019re called trip stairs, because if you\u2019re madly charging the castle, you\u2019re probably not going to notice that one stair is 3 inches high, and the other is 8, causing much chaos.\u00a0 Even now, the Tower only lets people go down them, not up, so they don\u2019t kill themselves.\u00a0 The Tower\u2019s defenses are so good it has only been breached once \u2013 by a rabble of peasants trying to behead a bishop named Simon for an evil tax.\u00a0 The guards didn\u2019t like the tax either, so they let down the drawbridge.\u00a0 Also, we learned why there are so few ravens at the Tower these days \u2013 Charles II put a royal astronomer in the top of the White Tower to try to make better maps for sailors.\u00a0\u00a0 But the flock of ravens, then 100 strong, was getting into his equipment, and generally making his life difficult.\u00a0 So, he asked to king to get rid of them, but he couldn\u2019t because of the curse thing that if all the ravens leave, the monarchy will fall.\u00a0 So they compromised by keeping 10 ravens, and clipping their wings so they couldn\u2019t fly up and make trouble in the astronomy tower.<\/p>\n

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One of the ravens of the Tower. Legend says that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, the monarchy will fall. Well, right after the Restoration, the king installed his royal astronomer in one of the tallest parts of the White Tower. The astronomer soon complained that the ravens, which numbered in the hundreds, were pooing on, and pecking at, and generally destroying his telescopes because they were shiny. Problem is, the newly restored king didn’t want to tempt fate by getting rid of them, so he ordered all but 8 to be chased away, and had the remaining 8 clipped so they couldn’t fly up and bug the astronomer. That’s why they don’t have many, and their wings are clipped. Though, these days apparently they keep spares. Just in case.<\/p><\/div>\n

The White Tower has been used for various things since its construction, such as storage, housing the treasury, housing the Royal Mint, and of course, housing prisoners.\u00a0 Now, it\u2019s basically a museum.\u00a0 It has some of the arms and armor from the various kings who used it, especially King Henry VIII.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s funny, we saw some of his armor that was at the Royal Armory at Leeds, and in his youth, he was probably a very fine figure of a man.\u00a0 But the Tower has a set from his last hosted joust \u2013 heavens, but he\u2019d gotten fat!\u00a0 The armor was HUGE!\u00a0 And they don\u2019t even know that he competed in that tournament, given his health and age.<\/p>\n

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Henry the 8th I am, I am!<\/p><\/div>\n

When we finally made our way out of the White Tower (after being let down the secret back staircase by Jennifer)\u00a0 we went to see the crown jewels.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t much of a line outside the building, and though there were lots of people, it moved along well.\u00a0 The thing that really gets me about all of the collection were these little tags every now and then \u2013 \u201cIn Use\u201d.\u00a0 I mean, some of the stuff was very beautiful, and all of it was over the top crazy valuable, you can tell. And then \u2013 someone is using it!\u00a0 Someone has called the place with the crown jewels and said \u201cHey!\u00a0 Can I borrow that tiara for this dance I\u2019ve got on Sunday?? Thanks!\u201d\u00a0 and then that is that.\u00a0 That part is hard to imagine.<\/p>\n

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Outside where they keep the crown jewels. No cameras allowed inside…<\/p><\/div>\n

We also manage to find a rather smaller collection of the crown jewels hidden away in one of the outer towers.\u00a0 There were two crowns there, both very interesting.\u00a0 One was a crown from like, George somebody, but Victoria (I think \u2013 maybe Elizabeth II) had had a new crown made, which used all the jewels from the old one.\u00a0 So this one \u2013 all of the silver and all of the mountings are still there, but it was empty of jewels. Looked pretty cool.\u00a0 The other one was a crown for I-can\u2019t-remember-who, who first had backless jewel settings.\u00a0 Well, dude apparently LOVED him some diamonds, and the crown was made to hold some 12,300 and some odd diamonds.\u00a0 Well, the royal family doesn\u2019t own that many diamonds, so they were borrowed, and given back two years later.\u00a0 So the crown is like, a spiderweb of silver, into which there would have been stuffed a simply obscene quantity of diamonds.\u00a0 I actually think it would have been pretty.<\/p>\n

As we came out of the secret jewel room, we decided that it was time for food. However, our journey to food was rudely interrupted by a man and a woman in costume, carrying on about something in loud voices.\u00a0 Since we are totally suckers for people in costume, we decided to stick around.\u00a0 Well, they were doing a thing about\u00a0 what was happening with a group called the 5th<\/sup> monarchists, who believed that Charles II should be replaced\u2026 by King Jesus.\u00a0 In other words, they believed that in 1666, it was going to be the second coming of Christ, and everyone should be prepared.\u00a0 The little gig was HILARIOUS.\u00a0 There was one guy who was playing the Lord Mayor of London, and he was all pompous and silly, and then there was a Monarchist who had snuck into the Tower, and then there was a woman wrongly imprisoned for accidentally attending a 5M meeting (\u201cBut they offered me a warm place to sit down, and a piece of cake!\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what I was doing!\u00a0 I was there for the cake!\u201d\u00a0 Lord Mayor: \u201cHrm, sounds like my wedding\u2026\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhat?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cOh!\u00a0 Nothing!\u201d)\u00a0 They had us divide up, totally randomly, into people who were just visiting the Tower for no reason at all, really, and innocent prisoners, falsely accused.\u00a0 We stuck with the innocent prisoners, and were told that our freedom was at hand! \u2013 as long as we were willing to spy on the 5th<\/sup> monarchists and report back to the Lord Mayor.\u00a0 So we spied on the meeting, after having identified ourselves via secret hand sign, and found out that there was a plot, supposed to go down on October 3rd<\/sup>, 1666, in which we were to kill the king, murder the Lord Mayor, kill the Horse Guards in their sleep and set fire to the city (which we duly reported back).<\/p>\n

Now here\u2019s where it gets a bit eerie\u00a0 – this is basically how it really happened, with people infiltrating the tower, and wrongly accused and imprisoned, and made to spy.\u00a0 And because there were so many spies, this plot was uncovered long before anything could come of it.\u00a0 HOWEVER \u2013 the great fire of London, the one that leveled some \u00be of the city, and supposedly started by a baker\u2019s accident –\u00a0 started in the wee hours of the morning on October 2nd<\/sup>, 1666.\u00a0 Accident or plot, we\u2019ll never know.<\/p>\n

We got some food, and spent more time wandering around in the tower, seeing the places where various people were imprisoned, and executed and so on.\u00a0 A lot of the rooms have carving in the walls, done by the various captives.\u00a0 Some of them are so good that they think wealthier prisoners might have been allowed to bring in stonemasons to do their prison carvings for them!\u00a0 We happened to catch the end of one of the Beefeater\u2019s tours, which was fortuitous, as the guy was very funny.<\/p>\n

He led us into the chapel on site (which you cannot enter without a Beefeater), wherein lie the remains of 3 of the wives of Kin Henry VIII, and which is still a working chapel today.\u00a0 The beefeaters and their families live on site so that they are there at any time, because in addition to tour guides, they are also the fire brigade in charge of the Tower, and so on.<\/p>\n

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Beefeaters! Doing their guard-y thing!<\/p><\/div>\n

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The green, where they did the private beheadings for some of the more esteemed guests of the Tower.<\/p><\/div>\n

Right next to the Tower is a little church called All Hallows.\u00a0 By London church standards, it is not particularly impressive, but the cool thing about is is that down in the crypt, it has a bunch of Roman mosaics and road surfaces.\u00a0 Because the Tower re-used the Roman foundations, a lot of the things nearby have Roman foundations or bits of wall as well.\u00a0 In All Hallows, they just went with it, sort of a \u201cwell, this perfectly nice paved and tiled floor is already down here, so let\u2019s go with that!\u201d\u00a0 It was pretty cool to see such nicely preserved Roman stuff, like a secret hidden away.<\/p>\n

After we finally left the tower, we headed for the nearby reconstruction of Shakespeare\u2019s Globe Theatre.\u00a0 There have been 3 Globe theatres \u2013 the first burned down and was hastily rebuilt, the second one was shut down by Puritans and the plague (I think) and then many decades later, someone decided that they wanted to rebuild a new Globe.\u00a0 It\u2019s not on the site of the old Globe, as someone in the intervening years built a totally different, important building on top of it, but it is nearby.\u00a0 Also, as they were getting ready to build the thing, they discovered the archaeological remains of the Rose, a contemporary Shakespearean Playhouse, in the basement three doors down.\u00a0 So they were able to use a lot of the evidence from that, as well as things that were know about the Globe, to re-create the theatre.<\/p>\n

It uses only period materials and techniques, so there are no nails in the entire thing, and the thatch roof is open to the outside, and you can get a ticket to stand in front of the stage as a \u201cgroundling\u201d.\u00a0 On our tour, we got to go inside and watch them rehearsing for \u201cTaming of the Shrew\u201d for a while, which was pretty entertaining.\u00a0 It must be almost opening, because this rehearsal seemed to be mostly about \u201chow to bow and remove your silly hat properly\u201d and \u201c how to not put our props under the feet of the person coming on next\u201d\u00a0 and in one case \u201chow to fasten one\u2019s poofy trousers properly\u201d.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they are sold out well in advance, and in some cases, for the entire run of the show, so we won\u2019t be able to see a full performance there, but it was fun.<\/p>\n

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Some of the costumes used in past productions. They are not, of course, actually old, but just like the Globe, they are made with as much attention to accuracy as possible.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Ooh! Pwetty!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Some period musical instruments. Music was a very important part of Shakespeare’s stage<\/p><\/div>\n

After the Globe, we had meant to go to St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral, over the Millennium Bridge, but by the time we got in there, they had closed most of the cathedral, and were doing some evening mass thing.\u00a0 We stuck around for a bit to listen to the choir and the organ, and the building was gorgeous, but we decided that we\u2019d have to come back on another day when it was properly open, so we headed for the nearby tube, and made our way home.<\/p>\n

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On the Millennium Bridge!<\/p><\/div>\n

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St. Paul’s Cathedral<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, June 18th Busy day today!\u00a0 Our main focus of today was the Tower of London.\u00a0 We took the tube over, just a short ride, though it was crowded.\u00a0 Serves us right, I suppose, for going during what is probably here peak commute.\u00a0 I think that if we had gone at 9 in the US, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}