This past Saturday I finally (!) made my way into London to explore and meet up with Faye, a book blogger who I’ve interacted online with for over a year. Faye was generous enough to offer to show me around London, and let me say I’m so glad I took her up on her offer as I had a great time and saw some parts of London I’m sure I wouldn’t have seen on my own.
|Transportation & Meeting Up|
My day started pretty early - around 6:30 AM and it was a foggy, cold and damp morning unfortunately. After some minor problems with the bus, I was able to get on one that would get me to the train station in time. I’ve learned while travelling to just ask people for help, and most often they are very nice and more than helpful. This served me very well on my journey as I was hardly alone both ways, which was good because I’d never navigated the train system in the UK before. I hear during the week it usually takes about 45 minutes direct from Colchester to London but they are doing construction on the lines on the weekends or something and it takes 1.5 hrs, with 2 transfers to a bus and then a train again before ending up at Liverpool Station. I ended up chatting with another University of Essex student, so that at least made the journey go by quickly!
Once I arrived I was easily able to find Faye, in her bright pink coat, and we promptly got on our way. The first thing on our itinerary for the day was the Tower of London!
From our Yeoman Warder we learned of the imprisonments and executions that occurred at the Tower of London - most famously that of Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII who was beheaded on May 19, 1536. Her bones are buried in the chapel we were sitting in, the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, along with those of Catherine Howard (Henry VIII’s fifth wife), and Jane Grey (The Nine Days’ Queen).
We also heard of the horrifying execution of 70-year-old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, also executed on the orders of King Henry VIII (god, that man was vengeful!). Apparently back then you could hold a terrifying assortment of jobs while being a drunkard such that of a butcher and executioner. You can probably tell where this is going, and yes, it ain’t pretty. Apparently poor Margaret Pole’s executioner was drunk and did a sloppy job of her beheading and ended up hacking her to death with five blows to her shoulder and neck, finally taking out his butcher knife to do the finale cuts. I’m not sure if that last part was added for effect or not, but it wasn’t needed - the truth is sickening enough and we haven’t even gotten to the part about the Bloody Tower!
After our history lesson we were free to wander, and so we went and saw the Crown Jewels. Pictures weren’t allowed, but let me say they were majestic. It’s hard to get your head around that you are seeing what is probably trillions of dollars of jewels in the form of spectres, crowns, and accessories! I laughed because they kept talking about The Coronation Spoon in the little shows they have going on while you are waiting to get into the various rooms, and I was imagining, I don’t know something like the site of a spoon you would use for tea or like a souvenir spoon for some reason. Well turns out it is more like a gigantic serving spoon that is over 800 years old! Color me surprised. I also got to see footage of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and was struck by how young she was and also, how well she has aged!
From there we turned again to a bit of darker side of history, and went to see the infamous “Bloody Tower”. Here we learned of the imprisonment of Sir Walter Ralegh, the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, and after ascending what is probably the smallest staircase in the world (Faye had to calm my claustrophobia a bit!), the probable murders of two young princes on orders of King Richard III. It was a lot to take in, and I definitely want to learn more about the Bloody Tower, as I did feel like the exhibit didn’t give me as much info as it could have.
There was a lot more to see, but we felt we had experienced a good amount in 2 hours and were getting hungry so we stopped for lunch and a chat before tackling the next bit of our itinerary.
|St. James Park|
After lunch we took the Underground or “tube” to St. James Park, aka Buckingham Palace. This was quite neat because it is an iconic site that you see on TV, most recently when Prince William and Duchess Kate kissed on the balcony in front of hundreds of thousands of adoring fans on their wedding day. However, I actually found Buckingham Palace a bit lackluster. It is no longer the monarch’s residence, and is used more just as a symbol of the monarchy. While it is big and has iron gates and guards around it, I just wasn’t in awe as I expected to be. It was cool seeing it though, and I also enjoyed seeing the Queen Victoria memorial/fountain and the Mall or promenade where royal processions always take place.
|Foyles & Dinner|
After a quick walk through St. James Park, we took the tube again, this time to Foyles, the famous London bookstore that has 3 or 4 floors! I looked up its history and it’s quite fascinating! According to Wikipedia, Foyles was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop in terms of shelf area (30 miles/50 kilometres) and number of titles on display! It also had some strange business practices in the past due to one of its rather eccentric owners, Christina Foyle (1945). She would fire staff on a whim, refused to install electronic tills or calculators and wouldn’t take orders by phone. However, expensive books could be ordered from as far off as Germany and were sent with a bill without prepayment! What really made the store known for it’s “anachronistic, eccentric and sometimes infuriating business practices” was a 3 part payment system that she instilled where you had to queue to collect an invoice for the book, to pay the invoice, and then finally to collect the book. Apparently sales staff weren’t allowed to handle the cash. Oh, and the books were arranged by publisher versus topic or author!
Thankfully, they have updated the store and their systems and so my experience was not so crazy! At Foyles we met up with another book blogger, Lucy, a friend of Fayes. They managed to convince me to get the UK edition of one of my favorite books of 2011, The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson which was signed!
With books in hand we made our way to Chipotles for a burrito dinner where we spent about 2 hours getting to know each other more, talking about books and laughing so hard our cheeks hurt - it was loads of fun.
|Leicester Square & Oxford Street|
To end off our day of exploring London Faye first took me to Leicester Square, the culture hub of London. It was quite busy as people were going to the theatre, and other events and shopping. We went to the HUGE M&M World which had 4 floors of M&Ms and branded merchandise. Some it was a little weird - I don’t know anyone that is THAT big of a M&M fan, haha. But some of the stuff was cute, but it was also a bit scary as it was really in your face marketing. We also went to some “tack” tourist shops that were really cheesy. I got a really cute mug (amongst some other souvenirs and gifts) that says “Stay Clam and Drink Tea”!. To escape the rain we then found this outlet mall/arcade/coffee place and got some slushies and just hung our for a bit.
Finally, to add a bit of magical touch to the end of the trip we hopped back on the tube and went to Oxford Street, a very “posh” area which was decorated for the holidays. There were big animated Christmas lights shows, sponsored by Marmite, with fairies, Santa, and elves which was really cute. The trees were light up, as were buildings! It was really festive and a great end to my first time in London!
Want to see more photos? You can check out my Dropbox folder here.
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