Out and about early to Ladbroke Grove station to catch the Circle line to Tower Hill stop – the neighborhood is really quite lovely. Oh sure, when I walk to get coffee at 6AM the sidewalks show the telltale signs of drunken revelry, but the sanitation crew is out there each and every morning sweeping everything up. The family friendly vibe is warm and safe.

Our first stop was the Tower of London. This is something of a misnomer as there isn’t really one tower per se – there is a complex of tower and castle and ramparts that make up what they call collectively the “tower”.

Key to this experience was visiting the White Tower, the building William the Conqueror commissioned shortly after he became king of England, and has remained pretty much the same for the last 950 years. It got its name from being whitewashed by Henry III in 1240.

It is now the museum of Royal Armories. Here is Henry VIII’s jousting armor, nice codpiece Hank.

Josef Jakobs, a German spy who was captured parachuting into England was the last person executed in the Tower, on August 15, 1941. This is the chair he sat in because the ceiling was so low in the room they used.

I like the White Tower buttons on the Duke of Wellington’s coat.

And we checked out the Crown Jewels in the Treasury; it is pretty good craftsmanship on the whole.

And there is the Chapel of St John the Evangelist. It is the most complete surviving example of early Anglo-Norman royal ecclesiastical architecture, just beautiful.

We then walked up on to the Tower Bridge itself. They want 18 quid to go up to the top, seems excessive.

After leaving the bridge we headed back to the Circle Line and got off at St. Pancras – why? To visit Old St. Pancras Church of course. It was about a 15 minute walk from the station.

This curch has stood on this spot in one form or another since the 7th century.

When author Thomas Hardy was a young man he worked for the railroad who was putting a line through the St. Pancras Parish cemetery in the mid-1800s.

He had the idea to take all of the headstones of the moved graves and corral them all together. Over the next century or so a huge ash tree grew out of the middle of the headstones and it was coined The Hardy Tree.

The tree toppled over in December of 2022, the trunk was left to be used as a bench. Fragments of headstone are encased in its roots.

It was as quiet as a church in tiny St. Pancras.

From here it was a short walk to the British Library. There is a giant sculpture of Newton out front.

Michele was delighted to find in the atrium a artisan craft fair; every vendor was vetted to ensure they created everything locally with their own hands. This is Niki Usagi, one of the artists.

But what we came for was their Treasure Room. They have a huge room filled with some of the most beautiful and rare manuscripts on the planet. (no photos allowed, this next pic is from their website).

They have one of only four copies of the Magna Carta, England’s Bill of Rights if you will. The barons forced King John to sign it guaranteeing due process over property and possessions, limiting taxation and the power of the king, etc. And while it didn’t hold up for long, it is still recognized as the inspiration for the US constitution.

And they have the Wycliffe Bible from the middle 14th century. He translated from the 4th century Latin book The Vulgate, written mostly by St. Jerome. It is stunningly beautiful.

And they have one of three known Tyndale bibles. William Tyndale was a theologian who was the first to work directly from Hebrew and Greek texts and translated them into English. He also believed that the common man should have direct access to the bible and had copies printed, and of course it was illegal to translate the Bible into English without church approval, which he did not have. He went to Germany to print and smuggle books into England; the church burned them as fast as he could print them. He also opposed King Henry VIII’s plan to divorce his wife Catherine which got him into even more trouble. He was captured and strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. Ironically, only three years after his death an English translation of the bible was authorized – and the content was mostly the work of Tyndale.

They also have a Gutenberg bible, but a staff member told me it hasn’t been on display for a few years.

And, they have the hand written notes from Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition skit.

It’s a great room.

We urbered back to our neighborhood to check out the ginormous Portobello Market. You have never seen so many people and stalls, it went on forever, food offerings of every region: Brazilian, Peruvian, Venezuelan, Southeast Asian, Caribbean whatever you wanted you could eat.

We headed a bit farther north to see the Trellick Tower. A social experiment first opened in 1972, it was built in the Brutalist style by Ernő Goldfinger. While it failed originally due to crime, vandalism, drug abuse and prostitution, it got cleaned up in the 1980s after a resident association was formed and is now considered a desirable place to live and is still mostly social housing. It has been used in a bunch of movies as a setting and backdrop.

For the evening, we got back on the Circle Line and took a short walk to the Savoy Hotel along the river embankment. The Savoy is a landmark in London with many “firsts” to its storied history: It was the first hotel in Britain to be lit entirely by electricity. It had the first electric elevators in the UK. It was the first in London to offer air conditioning, the list goes on.

We came for Twilight Tea – Afternoon Tea is that quintessential English pastime usually offered in, well, the afternoon. The Savoy changed it up some for an evening affair. The Gallery room is beautiful.

We arrived early and had drinks at the bar and chatted up bartender Javier who made us great negronis. He embossed the Savoy name into each ice cube.

We were so hungry we devoured some of the sandwiches before we even thought of taking a pic:

My tea, Red Dragon, was divine.

I asked the piano player if he took requests; I gave him a couple of songs he either did not know or play, and he was just going on a break. He came back in a few minutes and opened with a beautiful, jazzy rendition of our song: I Only Have Eyes For You – he learned it on his break.

He also played two versions of Wouldn’t It Be Nice, which he also figured out during his break.

It was a wonderful ending to a wonderful day.

With love,

M&T