curiouswombat | Trip to London.

I have chased the cat off the key-board – much to his disgust – and am posting some pictures of our holiday in London.

We didn’t take any pictures of our hotel, or our shopping trips, or even the National Portrait Gallery, which is one of my favourite places in London, and now also Daughter-dear’s as well.

The hotel was very good, two minutes from Kensington High Street tube station, in a cul-de-sac – and we got a good price on the internet – if anyone ever needs the details, just ask!

My daughter is, of course, really into history, and so on our trip we visited a number of historical sites, and spent a good length of time at them, rather than dashing through! So most of our pictures are of ‘history’!

Actually I lied about there being no shopping pictures – we visited Covent Garden, and I took a couple of pictures of the roof – so here is a picture of one of the shopping halls at Covent Garden.

We visited both The Tower and Hampton Court – but tonight I am only putting the Tower pictures on my journal.

Because it was Easter week and therefore school holidays we found that at the Royal Palaces there were people doing re-enactments – an added bonus!

So these pictures show some of the re-enactment of the Theft of the Crown Jewels by Colonel Blood in 1671.

This is Talbot Edwards, Deputy Keeper of the Crown Jewels, and his daughter. (The aristocratic ‘Keeper’ lived somewhere else, and employed Edwards to do the job.)

Colonel Blood, disguised as a parson, befriended Edwards, with the promise of his well to do nephew as a suitor for Miss Edwards. The ‘nephew’ was actually his son, a petty thief, and on the day of the attempted theft Blood, his son, and his brother-in-law Hunt rendered Edwards unconscious and attempted to escape with the jewels – here is Blood junior -

And here are the three thieves making their getaway –

They were of course apprehended, in the first instance by Edwards’ son who arrived at The Tower unexpectedly, and the jewels were recovered.

(If you want to read the story, try here - http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/England-History/ColonelBlood.htm )

You aren’t allowed to take pictures of the Crown Jewels – but they are stunning – both of us were actually most impressed, funnily enough, by a gold punch bowl the size of a bath covered with gold lobsters, barnacles etc!

However you are allowed to take pictures in the Royal Armoury – and I managed to take a few fairly good ones, despite the lowish light level – this first one is armour made for Henry 8th when he was first married to Katherine of Aragon – it is engraved with what are basically’ Henry+Katherine4Eva’ motifs!! I love the metal 'pleated skirt'!

And I think that this is the one made for Henry’s brother Arthur when he was Prince of Wales which is engraved with scenes from the life of Alexander the Great!

We didn’t see the ravens – they were staying in their little Raven-barracks!

We did get a good view of the now-famous ‘Gherkin’ building though –

And I took a picture of this ancient Chinese Cannon, because it reminded me of the Discworld -

Although people say how expensive the entrance fees are we thought it was well worth it - £15 for me, and £13 for D-d, as a student – you would pay more for a theme park, and our visit kept us occupied for six hours. And the food was very good, and not at all expensive by London standards – we were quite impressed!

And as we came away from the tower, I took the almost compulsory picture of Tower Bridge -

Later this week I’ll put some more of the pics up – and a couple of pictures of historical monuments that only a real history buff would make pilgrimages to!

Current Mood: impressed
Current Location: Not - the Tower of London.
Current Music: News on TV