London Day 4

Abbey Road

Another full English breakfast and then off we went to play on the tube.
First stop was Abbey Road, just for fun. We found the zebra crossing. It was nothing special, it would appear that four blokes recording an album said 'what are we going to put on the cover?'
The answer was probably let's go outside the studio and find the closest thing.
Considering that, 45 years later the crossing is full of tourists, the locals must love it.
Anyway unlike the other tourists, Tammy did it properly and took her shoes off!

Tower of London

Tammy took me shopping for a new suit of armor, this is the breast plate section. Unfortunately it was suggested that I shop in the ladies section for a breast plate.




We went to the Tower of London, we thought a couple of hours would do it but we were there for 4.5 hours. This is a picture of a nice spire, I call it the Shard spire.


The queue to view the crown jewels was about 2 km long. I asked one of the guards, in his red skirt, why people would stand in line that long to see someone's pots and pans. 'Anyway', I added 'They are only replicas, not even real'. The guard was so upset by this comment that he said 'follow me' and led us through a side door straight into the crown jewels room in front of the line. OK point proven, they are real. But I didn't have to stand in line.

 


The Grenadiers are the elite of the Queens Guards. They have an exploding grenade picture on their collar to signify that they are grenadiers. The hats they wear are made from the skin of Canadian Black Bears. This is obviously after the bear has finished using it to keep all of his insides, in.
They march up and down for no apparent reason other than for tourists to take pictures and make hurtful mocking comments like 'hey is that a bear on your head?'
Anyway Tammy made me stop.


 













This is the White Tower that is now a museum with all the Queens armor and bits in it. William the Conqueror started building it in 1070 after his success at Hastings in 1066. That makes the building nearly one thousand years old. It is a bit hard to get your head round that, 250 generations.










Yay, Black Books.
It really is a book shop.

Night time in Soho.
We found a great restaurant in Chinatown.
Then it was time to tube it back to the motel.
Except we found one more pub with 20 local craft beers. Just behind the motel.


 





 Tube








They must have known I was coming and made a nice special beer for me. I love English pubs.