Still London!

Two busy days to fill you in on.

Yesterday: Walked to Covent Garden, found the bus to London Tower. Not a double decker, but we had one of those later on! Very cool. The Tower of London was very well done. It reminded me a little of Sovereign Hill with the people in costume wandering about, but it was all very well done. We walked over the Tower Bridge. But we found that halfway along we could actually (pay and) go inside the bridge. So we went up to the top of the bridge to the covered walkway bits and walked along both sides, taking pictures. The weather has been so great, clear and fine, even sunny at times! Then we wandered down to the end of the bridge, to catch the lift to the roadway. The lift attendant told us that we might just be in time for the bridge opening (for a ship that is). And we were! We came out of the lift, and the bridge's middle was rising. Talk about timing! So of course we took photos. I will hopefully be posting photos after our Contiki tour. Promise :-)

We then caught a bus to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, which is a reconstruction of the 17th century theatre in which his plays were performed. The place is very well done. Everything was done using medieval tools too. The sponsors of the project (ie those who gave money) were each given a stone in the courtyard. John Cleese bought two stones, one for himself and one for Michael Palin, but deliberately had Michael's name spellt Pallin to annoy him. But, according to the guide, it was ironic as in doing so, Michael Pallin had a larger stone than John Cleese!

Caught a bus to Waterloo Station, then another from there to Russell Square (the double decker). We made our way to the Royal National Hotel, as we had a Jack the Ripper tour starting at 7.15. The tour took us to the east end of London, which was great, as it gave us an insight into the area, both in 1888 and today. Had fish and chips in a pub called the Prospect of Whitby. In the time of Jack the Ripper, they used to hang people behind the pub, then stopped, and took to drowning them. Lovely!!

Today:Got up early, and headed to the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street. Not really my thing, but interesting nonetheless. Caught the train to the Museum of London. Excellent. :-) I love museums. I gotta find me a badge that says that. Caught a train from St Pauls to near our hostel. So we could see the Mummy!! The British Museum have an exhibition on at the moment called Inside a Mummy. It was fantastic! They used hospital imaging techniques to see inside the mummy and determine what he was entombed with. It turns out that the embalmers left the bowl behind his head, or so the theory goes, and realised the next day, and just wrapped him up bowl and all hoping that no one would notice! Love it. The 3d film was brilliant. And then we got to "meet" the mummy, as he is in the museum's collection.

And that is the story so far. We are off on our Contiki tour tomorrow morning, really early. :-)