London - Day 5

Monday.  We were pretty disheartened to see it was still raining.  But it was London after all, what did we expect?  We chose tourist sites not too far from the hotel.  First stop, the Tower of London.  I suppose maybe it was a good thing that it was raining just to keep some of the tourists away.  It was still busy, but likely not as busy as it could have been.  We toured the Bell Tower, saw the crown jewels, learned about their Kings, the horses, the weapons, the cells, and the torture devices.  The tower was best known for its torture and murders, apparently a grand place to attend an afternoon beheading.  We read the history of kings being in favor and out of favor; must have been a crazy time to live.

One of only two pictures we had taken together.  The Tower of London is in the background. Below, a Beefeater at the Tower of London in his wet weather attire.

A residence at the tower.  I loved the blue door.

To be honest, I was rather put off by the opulence of the royal families throughout history and even today.  The crown jewels were over the top stunning. No pictures were allowed of the exhibit.

We stopped at the gift shop and found some fun gifts for the girls.  I'll have to get a picture of Misha's favorite treasure.  It is so her.  And she is planning her Halloween costume around it.  We ate a quick lunch at Subway (they were all over the place) and headed back to the hotel to drop off our purchases.  By this time the rain had stopped though it was windy.  Hooray!  We kept our umbrellas close by, but enjoyed a fairly mild day the rest of Monday.

Our next stop was the International War Museum's Holocaust Exhibit.  It was sobering and frankly one of my favorite visits in London.  We spent a couple of hours reading all of the exhibits and watching films.  I don't think we spoke to each other the entire time as we solemnly toured.  As we were leaving the building upon closing, we noticed a piece of the Berlin Wall on the grounds.

We were close enough to the River Thames to walk to it.  I took some evening pictures of the Parliament Building and Big Ben.  We strolled under the London Eye and continued until the Millennium Bridge.  The bridge spanned the Thames and led us directly to St. Paul's Cathedral.  We arrived shortly before six pm, and on the hour, the bells began to ring.  The ringing continued the 45 minutes that we were in the area.

Already we had walked miles all over London and chose to walk the streets back toward our hotel.  We happened upon a Mediteranean restaurant and both immediately agreed upon it for dinner.

We arrived back at the hotel, dropped off the back pack and went out for a final glimpse of the city.  By this time, I was getting pretty tired and still had packing to take care of for the morning.  Chris talked with a coworker while I packed and got ready for bed.  I chatted for a bit with Amy and then Kristen.  Misha was at Drama Club.  Chris set the alarm for 6 am.