More dead people stuff...are you seeing a pattern?

So the next day we dropped off the car, much to Trish’s delight and hopped a bus to London. No I couldn’t convince her to drive into London…I KNOW! We had 2 drivers, one was in training and so that left the "trainer" free to be our tour guide as we drove to the station in london...he was great! After finding our hostel and washing up we were off to meet up with yet another of my internet friend, Ally. What a beautiful girl (young lady I guess I should say…lol) she is and I SO want her boots! Anyways, we met at the station near the Tower of London and headed off to there to see that.

It was okay, not as great as I would have thought. We actually got searched before we went in! Security is tight in London at all their big historical attractions I guess. It just seemed so odd to us Canadian girls. But we made it through with no arrests…whew. What the coolest part of the towers I thought was…me being the macabre sort…was all the engravings on the insides of the towers, carved there by so many of the prisoners that inhabited the place so long ago. They are supposed to be haunted and I did have a nauseous moment or two but nothing major. As my psychic friend Diane says “I think they’ve all left”…lol

They also had the ravens there and if anyone doesn’t know the myth surrounding them it’s this: the tower must always have 6 ravens in residence…any less then England shall fall. Well they have 12, I think the guy said, and all have their wings clipped which I think is totally NOT playing fair!

After that we found a great tapas place complete with cute waiters (the semi owner guy who waited on us was tons of fun!) and had some good food and of course drinks…-coughs-…we had a great time, Ally is lots of fun and has a great sense of humour.

Then we were off to the Jack the Ripper Tour which led us about the streets of the infamous darkened streets of the White Chapel District. It was awesome, interesting, fun and totally gruesome…all my favourite things! Apparently depending on whom you get as your guide you end up with a different prime suspect at the end. I would so love to do them all. But I still think the orangutan did it. (yes the resident zoo ape was at one time on the suspect list).

When that was over we all said our sad farewells and got on our respective trains and found our beds.

Next day Trish and I were off to (actually Hever Castle but now that I've finished typing this all out I've realized that I’ve so screwed up the dates so I’ll post about that next…lol) Westminster Abbey. On the way to W.A. we of course saw Big Ben which is located right there and also the parliament buildings where guards were at the gate with great big assed guns. And Big Ben? Eh…it’s just a big assed clock.

Westminster Abbey wasn’t something that I would put on my list had it been myself going, but Trish wanted to go and so we did. I was surprised by the amount of people who are buried there…holy crap! Elizabeth 1st, her half sister Mary, Mary Queen of Scots…the list goes on and on. I particularly loved poets corner, a corner of the abbey devoted to poets, writers and actors. Buried here you’ll find Chaucer (holy shit!), Robert Browning (I was very saddened to read that his loving wife is buried in Austria! Why?!), Dickens, Jane Austin, Laurence Olivier…on and on and on…they had wanted to get Shakespeare moved to here but if you remember the curse on his grave that I took a picture of, you’ll see why they probably didn’t. (Good friend, for Jesus' sake forebeare
To digg the dust enclosed heare; Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, And curst be he that moves my bones)

After that we were off to Highgate cemetery, Yay! Yeah well not so fast. It took us forever to get there and when we finally did we found out that the oldest side, the Westside can ONLY be seen on their tour that they do once a day during the week at 2pm. We were too late. –cries- We could still see the East side but it was already getting close to being the time we had to meet, yes, another internet friend, Liam! So with me totally bummed we left, hoping to catch the tour when we would be back in London after France.

So off to Piccadilly Circus we went to meet up with Liam at the huge fountain. If you’ve been there you know the one. We waited for some time, looking around at the zillions of people hanging around there wondering how the hell I was gonna pick him out. I saw someone I thought might have been him but he walked by us a couple times and didn’t react in any way to the Canadian patches on our bags….so I thought it wasn’t him. But in the end it turned out it was..lol..and so we went to, yes, a pub! Liam was really sweet and funny and nice and we had a great time. We agreed to meet up when we came to London after France.

So then it was a little shopping at a souvenir store and then off to find our beds once again. Next day would be Hever...well not really but you know what I mean...lol