Two Towers and a Theatre

Today, after an early visit to the local Paddington laundrette, we made our way to see the Tower of London.  We chose a wet walk along the Embankment to get there and it got even wetter during our visit to the Tower.

The White Tower, which rather reminded us of an Ikea superstore – once you are in you have to go round the whole blooming lot before you get to the exit!

A grand view of Tower Bridge from the Tower of London – with Traitors Gate in the foreground.

There was some very impressive graffiti on the walls of the towers which held some of the early prisoners of ‘high breading’.  Sadly, for some it was their last mark on life.

There's quite a lot of very attractive housing within the walls of the Tower – mostly lived in by staff and “the privileged few”. 

As the rain fell relentlessly, we queued for half an hour to see the Crown Jewells.  They have been ‘re-presented’ to commemorate the Queen’s Jubilee and awesome and stunning are not enough to describe them.  Having not seen them before we were amazed and they are really worth seeing.  However, we think the rest of the Tower “experience” is a bit lacking for one of the top tourist attractions.

After the Tower of London we went for a tour of Tower Bridge which is most definitely worth it.

We went up to the top walkways spanning the two towers and enjoyed terrific views across the city – Canary Wharf is left of centre.

Looking up river, City Hall in the foreground, with The Shard and Guys Hospital (being enlarged) to its’ left.

HMS Belfast permanently moored in the river and dome of St. Pauls’ Cathedral just left of centre.

We also went down into the Engine House where the old, and now retired, steam engines are kept in perfect condition.

Leaving Tower Bridge we took the short walk to Shad Thames where we got a very atmospheric view of the bridge with the ever-changing London skyline behind.

After our very interesting day in the two Towers it was a very quick dinner at Zizzi in Shad Thames, with excellent service, before a rapid dash back to ‘Chance’ for a wash and brush up.  Then it was back onto the tube to the West End to see Felicity Kendal and Kara Tointon in Alan Ayckbourn’s “Relatively Speaking” at The Wyndham Theatre, which we managed to get tickets for earlier in the day. 

We enjoyed the performance very much, Felicity Kendal was hilarious, and in the interval we got chatting to a lovely couple Roz and Wayne from Australia, after which we toddled off to Soho for a drink before heading back to Chance (by 11:30 this time!!).  Another good day.