12-12-05 Last Day in London

Well, we had a bit of trouble getting to sleep last night, thinking of our wonderful vacation coming to an end. We had our customary breakfast then hopped on the train for Central London under dark clouds from the refinery explosion that took place over the weekend. It was pretty funny reading the billboards for the local papers with headlines like “Poisonous Cloud Smothers London” and “Killer Cloud Approaches”, quite funny.

So, our first stop was St. Paul’s Cathederal where Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married. It was just a spectacular place. The view from the west door to the east window was beyond description, and some of the tombs were so ornate, and some of the wording on the headstones was quite mysterious. While we were there, a crane was lowering boxes of staging and the Nativity Scene props, apparently all of this is kept up in a very high storage area near the roof, the drop to the floor had to have been at least 100ft. It was interesting to see St. Pauls was in need of some good wood restoration services, several of the wooden doors were all dented and chipped along the bottoms.

Then we went over to Tower of London for a delicious lunch, and a tour of the Tower. Our Yeoman tour guide was very stern with some foreign visitors who were translating what he was saying, he had to have asked non-English speakers to move to the back and let English speakers move to the front, and then finally he blew his English stack and was a bit rude about it. The tour was of course fascinating, learning about what they did to the people held in the tower, totally blood thirsty stuff. We saw the armor that was worn by Henry The VIII, and the axe and chopping block from the last execution. There were public executions, and private executions for hundreds of years.

Then we went down to Oxford Circus for some tea and some last minute shopping. It was quite busy on Regent Street, so we decided to cut the trip short and head back to the hotel before the rush hour. We are currently packing, getting ready for the early morning ride to Heathrow. We hope you have enjoyed reading our Blog and looking at the pictures.

Cheerio for now.