Great Britain
Day 22 - Thursday, 29 May 1997
Tower of London
Thursday morning we hurried to White Tower (it started as just a tower and a whole castle grew up around it) and went directly to the building where the crown jewels are kept, having been forewarned by our guidebook about the crowds that line up there later in the day. It is an amazing sight but no pictures are allowed in this area so you will have to take our word for it. Gold, jewels, crowns, altar plates, chalices, even an enormous gold punch bowl!
Afterward, we tarried in the courtyard and watched the ravens. The original ravens probably came here because of the executions. There is a superstition that if they disappear it will mean the fall of the British Empire and the White Tower. So there is a Raven Master who feeds and protects them, and makes sure their wings are clipped. A sign warns tourists - they bite. The Ravens that is.
Tower Bridge
Here too we were able to walk on the castle wall, and from it we can see Tower Bridge. An interesting thing happened while we were in London; so was Bill Clinton! Bill & Hillary were having dinner with the newly elected PM Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie. They must have lingered over dessert because they left the restaurant about an hour later than expected. Someone failed to let the bridge master know they were now en route. He opened the bridge for a nobody boat to pass. The Blairs and Clintons were stuck in traffic until the boat floated on down the Thames. The security guards were NOT happy!
We had lunch near the bridge trying to get good pictures of the American flag flying beside the British flag, but the wind was not strong enough for good video.
Greenwich
We walked by an old section of Roman wall (the evidence is everywhere!) and caught a train out to Greenwich. It took us through the Docklands industrial section and we had to go down into a tunnel and walk under the Thames to reach it. But this is the place to see the zero meridian. We snapped photos of each other with one foot in the western hemisphere and the other in the eastern hemisphere.
We saw the Cutty Sark and the Gipsy Moth IV, a 53-foot sailboat used by Sir Francis Chichester for his solo voyage around the world in 1967.
And we were tired!