Rob and I missed breakfast. We woke up just a bit too late, around 11am or so. We got our act together pretty fast, however, and headed to Paddington Station to exchange money and grab brunch at a bagel place nearby. We took the forty-five minute journey to Tower Hill and quickly went across the street to the tower of London. Tickets were under 10 pounds for students, so we got in for a relatively cheap price compared to other famous sites. Once inside the old castle, we took a tour with an enchanting yeoman.
Our group was made up of around probably sixty people. They did not split up the groups, they only mentioned that another tour would begin in a half hour. He played to our sense of humor to uplift us while he told stories of beheadings and murders. We learned the history of kings, the former zoo within the castle walls, the executions outside and within the castle, and the daring escapes of the innocent captives. One such story was of an archduke that was sent to the castle for execution. His wife came to say her final words, but unbeknownst to the guards, she had brought with her clothes to dress her husband up as a handmaid. Her husband easily escaped with the other handmaids of the wife. She stayed in the room for a time, and upon leaving, she asked the guardsman to leave her husband alone until morning. Though the guardsman found his death the next day, she and her husband, as they say, lived happily ever after.
Next, we visited the Crown Jewels of the Royal Family. The diamonds on those crowns were gigantic. I suppose that was the point, but it just seems so excessive. It made me feel like they should have spent less on tradition and more on the people, but England doesn’t seem to be doing so bad. Either way, I was taken aback by their exuberance. We headed for the White Tower thereafter and saw the armory and a recreation of royal apartments. They were beautiful and excessive, but the armory in Krakow was far ore interesting. I got a little claustrophobic from the slow moving crowds within the tower, so I tried to move quickly through much of it. We finished our tour of the Tower of London with a walk through the old torture chambers of the castle. They had three machines, but that was it. I suppose three is enough when it comes to torture. All the machines really had the same purpose in the end.
Rob and I went back to the hotel quickly to get ready for the show in the evening. Somehow, we ran into Dr. Bob on the way back and rode all the way from Oxford Circus with him. He had picked me up a book about Stonehenge in order to prepare me for my trip on Wednesday. It was a fiction novel, but it had great ideas about what the stones may have represented.
Rob and I ate at the Shakespeare for dinner. Service was horrible. Our waiter left halfway through our waiting time, and it took another half hour for the waitress who took over to realize our orders were never placed. The fish and chips came out in about two to three minutes. We wanted to be mad, but the food was just too good. We made it to the show right on time. The show was a musical called Wicked, which chronicled the life of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. It was just wonderful. The woman who played the lead had one of the most powerful voices I have ever heard. It just blew me away. The story was very clever as well; I would recommend the show to anyone. Afterwards, I headed back with a group and went to bed.
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