Trip to London

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DAY 1

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

DAY 5

Today we're leaving, but we still haven't seen one of London's most famous attractions - the Tower of London. It's actually not far from Andrew's flat, just two stops by the train.

The entrance fee is not exactly low (about 15 pounds), but what the heck, you can't go to London and not see the Tower right:-)? Inside we rented the audio guide. There are free guided tours every hour given by guys in the Yeoman costumes, but we prefered to go at our own pace.

Tower is quite nice and photogenic place, although the impression of its grandeur is somewhat diminished by the tall modern buildings surrounding it. Tower is at the river in a busy area, not on a hill, like most castles (after all, there are no hills in London:-). So Stirling or Edinburgh castles look much more dominant, but it is still worthy to go to the Tower. There are some nice views over the Thames river and Tower bridge, another landmark of London.

What was especially nice was the exhibition about the Gunpowder Plot orchestrated in 1605 by Guy Fawkes and other English Catholics in order to kill the Protestant King James I. and most of aristocracy by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the opening ceremony. For that purpose they smuggled barrels stuffed by gunpowder in the cellars. The conspiracy was, however, uncovered and the main culprit Guy Fawkes was arrested. Later he was tortured to find the other culprits.

Incidentally, we went to the Tower shortly before the great movie "V for Vendetta" came out - what a nice coincidence. Interestingly in the movie the mask of Guy Fawkes is used in reverse, positive sense: as a symbol of fight for freedom and defiance to fascist regime.

After seeing Tower we returned to Andrew's place, finalized our packing (we were leaving with more stuff than we came with:-) and left. We took the train and metro to Victoria station and from there train to Gatwick Airport. We were short 5 pounds, but had ten Euros. Unfortunately nobody wanted to exchange that with us, but eventually a guy from exchange did so (at a steep commission, though:-).

Nothing special happened afterwards, except a beggar in the train, but an inventive one - he gave good speech and sang a song, so people were quite willing to give him some change. Our short trip was over.