Day Seven: Prison Time in the London Tower Isn’t What It Use to Be

We met Sarah for breakfast this morning and got off on an early start. The tube took us over to the East end and we got off at the Moorgate Station. A few blocks later and we found Leadenhall Market. The Market hadn’t opened yet, but people were setting up and there were several nice shops, cafes, and restaurants in the Marketplace.

After a few more turns we finally found The Glass House. In another setting some of you will recognize this as The Leaky Cauldron in the Harry Potter movies. We didn’t go inside, but Sarah said it is mostly the setting and not the shop itself.

We headed out of the Market area and circled around the new Lloyds of London Building, which has to be one of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen for a city setting. As we first came up to it, before Sarah told us about the building, I thought it was a brewery or a factory building in the middle of the financial district. All of the ductwork and piping is on the outside and the windows look like ship portholes. I didn’t take a picture , but here is one that I found in Wikipedia. Suffice it to say, if I owned stock in Lloyd’s of London and saw shareholders’ money being spent on this monstrosity, I would not be happy. That being said, I don’t have stock in the company and if I did it wouldn’t be significant enough to warrant their concern.

Almost directly across the street if a great view of the Gherkin Building. I have mixed views regarding this building. It looks great, but when juxtaposed against the very (and I mean very) old church on the street, it does seem out of place. However, it is much better than the Lloyd’s Building.

From this part of town we then walked over to the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. These structures are right next to each other and you can look down the moat on the East Side of the Tower to the entrance of the Tower Bridge.

What you can’t see in this picture is the satellite dish for television on the lower wall of The London Tower. I don’t think being a prisoner there now is quite the same as it was a couple of hundred years ago.

We had hoped to take a tour of the Tower Bridge and get up onto the upper walkways, but time was running out for us to get to the noontime concert at St. Martin’s-in-the-Field, so we passed on the exhibits and tour for this time. We did walk down onto the end of the bridge and then circled back around the Tower where Cheri took a picture of Sarah and me. I managed to also enlarge and crop a portion of the picture.

Rushing from the Tower of London we made it to St. Martin’s-in-the-Field just before noon time so we could make it to the concert. As we went in and found almost no one there we realized that noontime also extended to 1 pm when the concert would actually start. So we headed off to a coffee shop for a quick cup and pastry to tide us over until we could have a proper lunch.

The concert was okay. It probably would have been much better if it had been just the pianist or some other voice part, but it included a soprano soloist, and that just ‘doesn’t float my boat.’ She was good, but I would much rather have listened to an alto, tenor or baritone—Thomas Morris comes to mind as someone I would love to have heard in this setting. She sang Schubert’s Ave Marie to open, performed a couple of mournful pieces by Debussy, her diction on a collection of Barber pieces was not really recognizable, the Puccini aria reminded me sharply why I don’t care for most soprano arias, and thankfully the Richard Strauss piece was short. I certainly thank Cheri and Sarah for indulging my desire to hear some music in the church…I only wish it was just the pianist—who was excellent.

The setting is beautiful and I took one shot of the window behind the alter. The panes and mullions are arranged to provide an oval in the center and twisting off from that to provide an abstract, but effective cross.

Following the concert we went to a Mexican Restaurant called Wahaca (pronounced Oaxaca) a couple of blocks off from Trafalgar Square. It is a place Sarah has been to before and she want us to try it. The meal was great. Authentic Mexican style with locally grown organic produce. We had a wonderful meal.

After lunch we had some time to kill before heading off with Sarah to her work at the pub, so we went into the National Portrait Gallery for awhile and then spent some time just sitting in Trafalgar Square. I did manage to catch Cheri trying to make heads and tails out of the various English coins in her coat pocket and then a quick study of Mother and Daughter on the steps of the National Gallery.

We caught a double-decker bus from Trafalgar Square to Edgeware and we were lucky enough to get front row upper deck seats again. I took a few pictures of the Oxford Circus as we went through and you can see how crowded it gets with people and vehicles. The pictures don’t really give you the full effect of the ride.

The adventure for today came to a close with getting Sarah to work on time and having a bite to eat at her pub for dinner. For your moment of Zen click on the following picture.

Double-Decker Ride