We left the flat and headed to Monument station, and walked across London Bridge. Now I had to have a picture of London bridge, because many people think that Tower Bridge (the unmistakable bridge in London) is actually London Bridge.

But it’s not. London Bridge is rather boring and unimpressive from a comparative perspective.

We walked across the bridge so that we could get to Borough Market, because we heard that it would be a really cool and authentic market in London.
We are so glad we went. Outside of being a really neat market, they were also having some sort of Spain celebration all weekend long, which meant that I got to have one of my favorite foods… samples!

In addition to the video I have of a lobster walking around on ice – soon to be someone’s dinner (coming soon), we also got to try a tasty Italian liquor, lots of different kinds of jams and cheeses, and a few different kinds of olives. We bought a small container of these olives for the low, low price of 3 pounds (Like $6.25. Have we mentioned that London is expensive?)
We also bought a smallish loaf of sun-dried tomato foccacia bread for 2 pounds ($4.20), a smaller piece of yummy cheese for 3 pounds, and some meat for about 2 pounds. Total cost for cold sandwiches (yummy sandwiches but not super-impressive food…) later in the day? More than $20. (I believe we’ve mentioned that London is expensive, right?)
From the really cool Borough market, we walked along the river to the bridge you will think is more impressive, Tower Bridge.

One interesting thing we learned about Tower bridge is that when it was originally built, it created so much water backup that it actually caused the river to freeze in the winter. The original bridge stood for about 100 years, and then turned into the more recent design which is an impressive bridge, but doesn’t back up the river enough to make it freeze solid.

We toured the Tower of London, which really was amazingly impressive. We’ve got a bunch of pictures to put up of this location, but here’s one of our favorites.

When you go to the Tower of London, depending on what kinds of sightseeing you like to do, give yourself at least half a day. Take the main tour and then there are others you can do as well, especially if you get there earlier in the day. The history of the location goes back to things that the Romans built here in the 200’s and 300’s, and the current tower has been there (as a palace rather than a prison) for a LONG time.

You can get your own Tower of London history at Wikipedia, if you’re interested in all the amazing details, but we really recommend at least four hours, if not a whole day, for this really neat place.

(And for all the women, or anyone else interested in gold and diamonds, the royal crown jewels are housed at the tower as well, and they’re worthwhile seeing.)

After the tour of the Tower, done by one of the The Yeoman Warders of the tower, (otherwise known as Beefeaters – though history doesn’t tell us why they got that name), Carrie and I sat by the river and ate our sandwiches. The day was cool enough that the meat and cheese stayed cold while we carried it with us, and our sandwiches were quite delicious.

After a walk to the opposite side of the tower, we went into a local pub to warm up and get some of the famous London Fish ‘n’ Chips (sans fish) as well as a taste tester of some local ales.

After that, we went on the “official” Jack the Ripper tour of London.

Now if someone sells you on an “official” Jack the Ripper Tour, you might be a little wary if they aren’t actually coming across as a good storyteller. Our tour guide was more fact based than story based, which was a bit hard to deal with for two hours of a cold walking tour that could have been told in such great story fashion.

There we are, in the heart of where the whole thing happened, and our “Jack the Ripper Walking Tour” only took us to the sites of two the murders, while there were actually five locations for killings attributed to Jack the Ripper. (The tour would have been better if it had followed a storyline of some sort.)

I’ll let Carrie comment on this more if she wants to, as she actually had a really great tour guide her first time in London, when she took the unofficial tour.

So we left London by staying up all night and catching a 3:00AM taxi to catch a 3:30AM bus. This is because we had a 6AM flight from London Stansted airport, and the London underground runs to Heathrow, but not Stansted. (Just for anyone’s future reference, London has four major airports – Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton, and Stansted). There is a train that goes to Stansted (Stansted Express), but not that early in the morning, so in order to catch our flight, we arranged for transportation to London-Stansted on a bus.

And our leaving London is where I’ll leave you for this rather long (but hopefully interesting) post.

Here’s the map of where walked today (with the exception of the walking inside the tower (for at least an hour), and the Jack the Ripper tour, which was an additional 2 hours of walking around various locations in London).

Carrie’s addition to this post regarding Jack the Ripper:

When I was in London in January 2003, we found a flyer for a Jack the Ripper walking tour.   We decided to go, as it was only £3 and we only had to pay if we really liked the tour.

Since none of us had any money at the time, we thought that that sounded like a good idea.  Our guide then was an amazing storyteller.  It was what he did for a living being one of the Yeoman at the Tower of London.  He guided us through the places where Jack the Ripper walked, stalked, and killed his victims (in sequential order).

As we walked, he told us little tidbits about London itself, about the area of town we were in at the time, and about Jack the Ripper himself (of course).  After a 3 hour walk that ended sometime after 10:30pm, I paid the £3 because I’d had a great time.  I learned a lot; I was very entertained, and felt like I had seen a lot.  I had also been given the guide’s guess as to who Jack really was, backed up by his “facts” and was completely convinced.  It was a wonderful time.  It was so wonderful in fact, that I wanted Jonathan to experience it as well.

While searching online for a Jack the Ripper walking tour in London, I came across the London Walks website (and a few others of course).  I couldn’t find one from the tour I’d taken before, so I thought we’d go on the London Walks version.  We met Judith at the designated area (along with about 60 other people), paid our £5, and were ready to go.  Thankfully, they split the mass of people into two groups.  I knew right away that Judith was more academically oriented than my previous beefeater guide, but I was hopeful that she would be a good storyteller as well.  After the first stop, Jonathan mentioned that he felt our guide wasn’t really telling us a story.  We hoped it would get better.  Unfortunately, it didn’t.   Judith took us to only two of the actual locations, and didn’t tell us stories.  She talked.  She talked as though reading a text book to us out of order.  The very last stop of the tour lasted for 20 minutes where she told us who might and who wasn’t actually Jack the Ripper.  The problem was that she was just giving facts without having a way for her audience to relate the facts to what we’d just been told on our walk.

If you go to London, I highly recommend taking a Jack the Ripper walking tour.  However, I am afraid that I cannot recommend that you take the one lead by Judith with London Walks.  While she is a very nice person, and full of information, she wasn’t able to capture the audience’s undivided attention.