London day 3 - Erika's Celtic Eyes

Still fighting the effects of jet lag, Erika and I woke up a little later than we'd hoped this morning. After a quick breakfast of English muffins and porridge (read: oatmeal) we took the train to Waterloo. From there we hopped on the Bakerloo and then the District lines until we arrived at Tower Hill to find our attraction of the day - The Tower of London. We purchased tickets and immediately hopped on a guided tour led by one of the resident Beefeater Yeoman guards. His name was Simon (as is the name of most very extraordinary individuals) and he gave us one of the funniest tours we'd ever seen, always emphasizing the heinous acts of torture and violence that took place within the Tower grounds and pausing to frighten as many of the young children on the tour as possible.

After the tour we explored the Tower complex on our own. First we visited the crown jewels and saw the biggest diamonds we'd ever laid eyes on... and the queen has several of them! After that we continued on to the White Tower, the most important and largest tower on the grounds. There, we learned about the armor used by the royal families and other British soldiers over the years. We continued on to the various prison cells around the grounds and finally finished our day there with a visit to the very happy torture chamber, seeing the famous rack and the hanging shackles.

After leaving the Tower and seeing the famous Tower Bridge, we took the tube to Regent's Park and I enjoyed a nice visit down memory lane. I showed Erika the park and where Regent's College was but we quickly decided to head back to Raynes Park to find a local pub to watch the Germany-Portugal Euro Cup game.

We headed to Waterloo station and then took the train back to Raynes Park. There, we had a delicious dinner at the Raynes Park tavern and enjoyed some much needed Strongbow Ciders. It's just the best drink in the world. We also watched a very enjoyable game and Erika made a new friend. She was chatting up a very friendly Irishman. Well, chatting up maybe wasn't the right word. For the first thirty minutes, we just all watched the game together and it was hard to understand him so any time he said something she just nodded and said "yea." As the game wore on, we learned that he was cheering for Germany, that he was Irish (not English... no Englishmen ever cheer for Germany,) and that he cheered for Germany because his ex-wife was Brazilian (so... kind of Portugese?) But then he advised us not to hold grudges! He was a very kind man who asked us where we were from and then was impressed that we weren't locals. (We're blending in. Yay!!!) He was even more impressed when we told him we were from the US and he told us about his daughter who'd worked in San Francisco. After Erika told him that she was part Irish, he noted that she had "lovely Celtic eyes." He invited us to stick around and offered to buy us drinks but we needed to head back and get to bed early to try to wake up earlier than we did this morning. We may be going to the same pub tomorrow so hopefully we can run into him again.

Tomorrow we're off to Westminster to visit Winston Churchill's war rooms and then we'll try to head to Buckingham Palace. We'll chat with y'all then!

-Erika & Simon