Day 2 -- Still London

Day two started at the Tower of London. Early on – say 10:30 on a Sunday – the lines aren’t anything to fear and we took the Yeoman’s Tour with a wonderful guide who decided to use me as Anne Boleyn whenever an example was needed. (Apparently, he thought I’d look better minus a head .) Given her end, I was a bit conflicted about the whole thing, but I couldn’t help admiring my predecessor when I learned that she’d asked for a French executioner to end it all, which had the effect of a) delaying matters for a year until one could be imported at great cost to the crown and b) making her end as quick and painless as possible. British executioners, it seems, could not be trusted to get it in one and often took several painful whacks to get the job done.

From the tour we continued on to the White Tower, saw some arms and armor, including a nasty piece of work called the brandistock, which would sprout three nasty blades with a flick of the wrist, watched a brief film on the Gunpowder Rebellion of 1604 (Ty insisted), and took ourselves off to the British Museum. (Okay, there was a brief stop in for lunch, but I don’t think I’ll be monologuing on that any time soon.)

The British Museum was, in a word, awesome. Ty and I went into raptures over the Egyptian exhibit. There’s nothing like hearing your just-turned-six-year-old call out, “Mom, canopic jars!” to make your day. He’s a little authority already and especially loved the mummies, skulls and sarcophagi. He chose a stuffed doll of Pharaoh Amenhotep as his souvenir. We also saw the Rosetta Stone, which Ty was as excited to see as I was. (Pete was excited by the card assembled replica of an execution scene, complete with realistic beheading he’d found back at the Tower.) Yes, we’re the Addams family – however did you know?

After that it was off to the Jack the Ripper Tour. I was saddened to learn that what I’d read as carriage ride really said “coach” (meaning bus) and the informative audio on the cruise was experiencing technical difficulties. However, the tour portion of the evening was great. Despite the guide trying to talk us out of bringing Ty, he loved it and was excellent on the tour. (I explained Ty’s plans to become Batman, thus his need for insight into the criminal mind.) Before we even hit the pavement we heard about Charles II, exhuming Cromwell to kill him twice more – by hanging and drawing and quartering – before sticking his head on a pole for good measure. We also learned about the origin of the term “whopper,” which our guide claimed came from the fact that pirates weren’t taken away to the Tower for execution but would be lowered toward the Thames in a cage, where high tide would have its way with them. After three days, the bodies would be bloated up, hence “whoppers.” Pleasant, right? We then stopped at a couple of the murder sites, saw the Ten Bells pub, etc.

Later our guide brought us by the Golden Boy of London, commemorating the sight where the Great Fire of 1666 ended. It started at the house of a baker on Pudding Lane and ended at Pye Corner, leading the zealots to conclude that the fire was God’s judgment on the city’s gluttony…. Anyway...we also saw the Wallace Memorial and the park where he was put to death, sharing a fate similar to that of Cromwell without the exhumation. (He was just hanged until almost dead first.) The Brits certainly had a thing about making sure their enemies were good and dead!

We finished up at the Sherlock Holmes Bar and Restaurant, where I bizarrely found a roll of socks under our table – a testament to my detecting skills? It was there that Pharaoh Amenhotep became Super Amenhotep under the skillful playage of Ty the magnificent.