Full-On Tourist Day (Part 2) - Tuesday, 18 May 2010

Tower of London

After I got off the boat I wandered around the Tower of London.  I don’t remember when it was built, but it was used in 1054, so it’s over 900 years old.  It amazes me, to be in a modern, sleek, well-run city of London, riding the Tube, listening to the radio, talking with you via phone satellites, and see, next to steel & glass skyscrapers, a 900 year-old building.

View of the Tower of London from the Boat

View of the Tower of London from Near the Front Gate

Corner View of the Tower of London

I really didn’t have any desire to go inside and hear about the tortures and atrocities visited upon those unfortunates who ended up in the Tower. Our guide had made a bad joke of saying that the Traitor’s Gate, where those convicted of treason were brought by barge into the Tower, was London’s first one-way street. Oliver Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were two who went unwillingly one way through that gate.

The Traitor’s Gate in the Tower of London

The street around the Tower of London is cobblestone, and I wonder if the paving stones could actually be 900 years old, too?

Cobblestone Street Next to the Tower of London

I remember when I went to a medieval village in Provence, France, that the cobblestones there still echoed with the sound of oxcarts, and I saw the ghosts of friars dressed in sackcloth laboring their way up the steep hill to the church. I didn’t quite get the same feeling from this street; no echoes or ghosts that I could discern. Too many tourists? Or just much newer cobbles in the street? I wasn’t sure, but it’s probably just as well that I didn’t see the ghosts at the Tower, as they might’ve been headless and frightening.

As I passed the last gateway into the Tower, this one supposedly for the guards and others who might actually see the light of day again, I was struck with the beauty and symmetry of the architecture. The infinite doorway must’ve been symbolic of something—the infinite/divine power of the crown, the soul that survives the death of the body—something, I’m sure, was in the mind of the architect who created this final door through from the outside world to the infamous Tower.

Final Doorway to the Tower of London

The Tower Bridge

The Tower Bridge, it turns out, was not built at the same time as the Tower of London, and is in fact, much younger. It’s really just a normal steel bridge that’s been decorated with stone to match the Tower.  Shows a deep respect for history and esthetics, I think, to go to all that trouble and spend all that money. It’s quite lovely.

The Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge Closer View

Our guide on the boat trip told us that they’re painting most of the bridges in town in preparation for the Olympics. He made it quite clear that the locals aren’t all that pleased with the money being spent and the inconvenience that’s being foisted upon the locals as London readies itself for even more tourists in 2012.

Next post: St. Catherine's Pier Area