Ready to hit the town in the midst of a historic heatwave.
We visited the nearly 1,000 year-old Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels.
I was not aware of the “Beefeaters” before today, but Grammy knew all about them. There’s a PBS reality show about them, I think. I have to give it to this guy, he was an incredibly smooth talker and really made Grammy’s day.
If the ravens leave the Tower, the Tower will crumble and the Kingdom of England will fall.
So the story goes. Supposedly the tradition of keeping at least six ravens at the Tower of London was ordered by King Charles II back in the 1600s after the royal astronomer complained about them and he had ordered them all killed. Instead, after being warned of the prophecy above, he ruled they be kept around and the observatory moved to Greenwich. The truth is likely far less interesting. In the late 1800s, Victorian tourists started arriving and the Beefeaters started keeping them around as pets because they lent an air of doom to the gallows. They’re props, essentially. Good ones.
The after-work pub scene is really something. Drinkers spill out into the streets all over the city.
Chimney pots line the tops of seemingly every building in London. Nearly every room in the usually three or four-story building would have had its own small fireplace, and each one of those would require its own flue. Thus, the row of chimney pots. Now they have historical preservation protections, as does just about every building in London.
I must have seen the Mary Poppins chimney sweep dance a thousand times.
Rudder Financial. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed in trying to figure out your investment strategy, or lack thereof, let’s talk and see if there is something we can do about that. If you’ve ever looked at the returns of the market, and then of your own, and felt underwhelmed, let’s talk about that as well. If you’ve ever wondered if you really have to work until you are sixty-seven before you’re going to be able to go off and do the fun stuff that you envision your life being filled with, LET’S TALK. Seriously, there is a financial path to just about any adventure, and I’d like to help you figure out how to get there.
Westminster Abbey. Now there is a bucket list item for Grammy.
It really is kind of amazing to think that for 1,000 years the monarchy has been crowning kings and queens right here.
I’m always fascinated by centuries-old graffiti.
The coronation chair, used to crown kings and queens for the past 700 years, but only protected from the riffraff for maybe the last 100.
Our AirBnB was only a block from King’s Cross station, where Harry Potter would begin each school year by catching the train on…
We may have read the books, but we aren’t deep enough into fandom that we’d wait in a line for a picture.
I can easily forget how tiny England is, but seeing that Edinburgh is just four hours away is a good reminder. The entirety of the UK is smaller than Oregon! Really packs a punch for its size.
I wonder just how many tourist’s lives have been saved by these.
The St. Pancras hotel. I love the look of this place. And hey, it basically launched the Spice Girls into the stratosphere as the setting of their Wannabe video.
Unconfirmed, but I believe this just belongs to some rich kid whose dad was involved in redeveloping the St. Pancras. It does make for a nice contrast in photos.
Cruising the canals sure seems like a fun adventure. Trying to eke out a living inside one of these, while having to move along at very regular intervals, does not.
