Day Four - More History In It's Little Finger

So today we woke up early yet again … I swear 5 am wake-ups are becoming a common occurrence here… however we are falling into a bit of a routine, we wake up struggle to drink the instant coffee provided to us as we plan our day and work out how to get to wherever we are going. We check emails, I write my blog and then we brave the breakfast room downstairs.

The one thing I am struggling with is coffee, the hotel seems to pride itself on the most horrible, sludge like coffee I have ever tasted and even copious amounts of sugar don’t seem to be able to disguise the ‘worse than bad’ taste. So our mission today was to find decent coffee, and we did, what we didn’t realize is that they don’t have flat whites, after receiving a really blank look and a tilt of the head we asked for a cappuchino without the froth …. Again a tilt of the head “Why would you not want froth?”

Anyways, enough about coffee, we took a wander down the Thames with our said coffees and ended up walking across the amazing Tower Bridge…. It was even better close up, there was so much detail to look at (architectural of course) we were just blown away at the skill stone masons had back then, we asked ourselves, if we had to build something like this now … would we still have those skills or are they lost? Would we be able to justify the cost of something like this or would we resort to a simple concrete bridge with no real architectural value? Who has it right, us with our cost conscious simplistic approach or the past with their over the top showing off. I have to say, I really enjoyed walking across the bridge, it was heaven so for me the past wins hands down.

We also spent most of the day at the Tower of London and can I say, it should be a must see on every ones list. I was blown away at the history in this one building (or group of buildings), the Yeoman Warders were hilarious but also gave us so much information I swear by the end of it I thought my head was going to explode, The crown jewels were so … excessive I don’t think you could appreciate them as the real thing, they were so over the top they looked fake…. (apparently I shouldn’t say this but hey, they did) However the punch bowl made of solid gold and took 8 people to lift was almost my favorite moment, I mean really, anyone who is anyone has a solid gold punch bowl.

Oh oh oh, and I think we found our artifact for the UK section of our trip … now don’t laugh but it’s the headpiece of a suit of armour … I thought it looked great and hubby is so excited about actually being able to wear it … I can see all sorts of wrong with that statement including him falling down the stairs because of the limited view but am not going to put the look but don’t touch sign on just yet.

We had a lovely pub lunch where we had what seems to be a very traditional English dish … the pie… and can I say, after eating a one of these our Australian pies are just disappointing, I had a chicken, bacon and tarragon pie and it was so good I almost wanted to order another one!

Finally the London Dungeon. I really need to thank the person who recommended this to us, it was so scary I spent most of the tour hiding behind husband’s shoulder and he split most of his time either laughing at me and trying to push me to the front of the group. It was a very good way of teaching the darker side of history but in all honestly I'm a bit of a fraidy cat and breathed a big sigh of relief when we finally left the building. A must see as long as you don’t have a heart condition.