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London – June 11th

Jun 16th, 2019 by rallyadmin

The weather forecast for today is partly cloudy and when we leave the hotel, it’s completely overcast. At least, it’s not raining. With the changeable weather here, it’s hard to put any faith in weather forecasts.

We skip breakfast and head straight to the Tower of London which is just a couple of stops on the Underground. I had pre-paid our tickets as a group of 4 and had just gotten the confirming email this morning. The plan is to get to the ticket window early and get on a tour before the crowds get there.

There’s already a line at the group ticket office but the line moves quickly. When I get to the window, I explain to the agent the we couldn’t print the confirmation email. No printer at the hotel.

No problem. The ticket agent takes my phone and downloads the appropriate docs to my phone. She asks me to point the phone to the file downloads and she displays each confirmation barcode so that her Ipad can photo each one. Then she displays each larger barcode on her Ipad and scan the code into the ticket system with a hand scanner.

It’s looks like a complicated way to get the barcodes into the ticket system but the agent does it so quickly, it’s obvious that she does this often. Another overly complicated automation system saved by operator intervention.

While I’m getting the tickets, B and the boys are finding a quick breakfast. The show up just a few minutes after I get the tickets. We head down to the Beefeater tour gather point to wait for the first tour that starts at 10:00.

The Beefeater leading the tour is named Shady and he’s quite the entertainer. The group is quite large, maybe 50 people but he leads about a 30 minute tour very efficiently. How many wives did Henry the 8th have executed here? 3. Who was the last person executed here? Who was imprisoned here and why? It’s a quick but information dense 30 minutes tour.

The Beefeaters are the Queens Guard of the Tower, They are not in the military though you have to have retired from the military to become a Beefeater. There are about 40 of them, both men and women. They are not officially called Beefeaters. The name Beefeater come from older times when the locals called them Beefeaters because they were give beek daily as part of their ration.

The tour ends and were on our own. We tour the main tower that is now the armory with large displays of armor and weapons of past monarchs. We see the ravens. And some ingenious wire sculpts of the animals that were kept here when the Tower. We walk the out battlements and see the Traitor’s Gate.

We leave and head back to the Tube. Next stop is the Leake Street Tunnel. The tunnel is an abandoned underground road that was closed by an expansion of the Waterloo train station. It’s been taken over by graffiti artists. And the work is brilliant.

This is where the famous street artist Banksy did some of his originally recognized work. We watch an artist work on a detailed black and white mural that’s probaly 10 feet high and 15 feet wide. We walk up and back. It’s a remarkable place.

Then back towards the Waterloo station. The kids want to do an attraction here call the London Dungeon which is near the London Eye. They head into the attraction and I head off looking for a sketch pad and some pencils for Talyn.

I wander around the area but that are only souvenir shops in this area of London. Finally, I head over to Waterloo station and find a book store. They have a Moleskin blank page notebook which will work as a sketch pad and pencils to go with it.

Back to the Dungeon atttraction to wait for B and the boys. They emerge and we set off for dinner at the Hoop and Toy again for a dinner on the way back to the hotel. It’s been a long day but it’s been fun and the weather has been great all day.

Back to the hotel to pack and get some sleep. Tomorrow we’re off to Swindon to pick up a rental car and move this circus toward the Channel coast.

Obi-wan

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