Tours and the Tower

It was another day of firsts for me, from a Blue Badge Tour to riding the tube (an experience in and of itself) to my first authentic fish and chips. :) We started out the morning with a neighborhood tour by a Blue Badge guide who was very informative and entertaining. He provided a lot of background detail about the cultural and historical context of the neighborhood and some of its famous residents, which is always interesting to hear. After a lunch in the flat, we had some free time of our own in which we could go to a scavenger hunt in the area or choose our own afternoon plans. I opted to visit the Tower of London with Robin—one of my places of interest that wasn't a class destination—and thus got to experience riding the underground.... (... = read more, especially if you want to see some Tower pictures!)

The experience actually wasn't bad, although I admit I expected the trains to be larger somehow; they seemed small compared to what I was expecting, but it was fine. We had to cross over once to another line, but made it to London Bridge, crossed the bridge, and got to walk for about ten minutes to get to the Tower grounds. That Tower of London is one massive complex! While the tube seemed small to me, the Tower grounds are huge! It's like a massive fortress complex when I was expecting something much smaller and with fewer buildings.

Given the time of day for our departure in the afternoon, I didn't have a lot of time to linger if I wanted to make it back for the group dinner at the pub, so we didn't get a chance to go on the guided tour. We did, however, get a chance to take lots of pictures, see the Crown Jewels (interesting with that moving platform), and get a couple of snapshots of the ravens and a trebuchet for SEMA. I made it back in time to join the group dinner at Marlborough Arms, which was a really nice little pub and my first experience with fish and chips; my cranberry juice even came with ice (shock shock), so it was a day of surprises all around. It was really nice to get to meet everyone and have a group dinner. Tomorrow morning's itinerary takes us on a tour of London via coach—we're branching out from Bloomsbury—but the afternoon is largely free after a flat meeting, so we'll see what exciting and interesting plans come about.

I won't be posting a slideshow everyday, but I liked these pictures and it was a really neat place to see, so I included a short slideshow of pictures from my tour of the Tower of London. :)