London Day Five

Our traditional English breakfast fortified us for another day of touring. We stopped at Tower Hill, site of innumerable public beheadings, then into the Tower of London for an excellent tour. The guide gave a very entertaining description of all the defenses a hypothetical invader would have to get through to successfully attack the tower. Exceedingly redundant and absolutely effective. Getting out was occasionally easier. The first captive climbed down a rope that had been smuggled in a cask of wine. Another prisoner tied bedsheets together, but they tore, he fell headlong and that was the end of him.
I love walking along the paths and passing Traitors Gate where Queen Elizabeth I entered the Tower. The White Tower, which William the Conqueror built, has an exhibit cleverly named: Henry VIII, Dressed to Kill. It featured several sets of armor custom made for Henry. He was a great athlete. Did you know Henry played "real tennis?" It's a game that looks a lot like squash, with the players facing each other as in modern tennis, but playing the ball off the walls, like squash. They say Henry was playing it at Hampton Court Palace when Anne Boleyn was executed.
Speaking of William "the Conqueror"(1066 and all that): have you had the impression he was a real outsider, kind of like Attila the Hun? Turns out he was King Edward the Confessor's cousin and William claimed Edward offered him the throne. Harold was Edward's brother-in-law and either Edward made two conflicting promises, William exaggerated his claim, or Harold just didn't get the memo. Harold's death at the Battle of Hastings gave William the kingdom and he immediately built the original Tower of London. We call it the White Tower because they used to whitewash it to cover the muck that ran down it from the privies.
Our guide slyly referred to 2012, the year of the London Olympics, several times when talking about possible improvements to the city. For example, the White Tower may be whitewashed again, say, in 2012.
We went to King's Cross station to find a Spanish restaurant, Camino, but arrived 2 minutes after table service ended, so we left in pursuit of a late afternoon meal. We took a double decker bus along Euston Road, watching for likely candidates. Jim spotted the Allsop pub, so we gave it a try. Jim had a wonderful lamb curry and I tried the Suffolk sausage and mash (potatoes) in a Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding is usually a small, baked, round affair, but this was a square the size of a dinner plate as delicious as the smaller ones. Happily the sausage bore no relation to the breakfast offerings at this hotel, i.e. it was tasty with a good texture. We shared a goat cheese salad, which shows that the pub is firmly in the twenty-first century.
We went into Marylebone Station and discovered another West Cornwall Pasty kiosk, but of course we were full of pub fare. (Note to self: remember Marylebone Station next time you're hungry.) I asked a sweet old gentleman how to say the name of the station. He said you could say it either "mary-le-bone" or "marlee-bone." Not too definitive.
This evening we attended a Viennese concert put on by the Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra at St. John Smith's Square near Westminister Abbey. We felt like we were in Vienna. Listening to the New Year's Day radio broadcast from Vienna is a tradition for us. There was a lovely young soprano, and several waltzes by several Strausses, including Roses from the South and the Emperor Waltz. The encores included the Thunder and Lightning Polka, (someone handed the conductor an umbrella) and ended with the the Radetzky March - a real Viennese crowd pleaser, where the conductor directed us to clap in time to the march.
Afterwards we walked beside Parliment as Big Ben sounded the tenth hour. The Lady Chapel of the Abbey looked impossibly delicate in the lighting. We walked half-way across the Westminster Bridge and again recreated the pixie dust scene from Hook, this time more authetically, since the streetlamps were lit.