The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 1: Dawn of the Romance (London--Tower of London, Tower Bridge, etc)

Before I start, I want to tell you guys that this is not going to be a typical "encyclopedia of Europe" type of posts. It mainly tells you what "I" experienced (yes, I'm narcissist like that.) So don't be too disappointed if you cannot learn too much from these posts. So here we go.

The first stop is the Heathrow Airport located west of London. While waiting for the other group members to arrive, I saw this girl who looks like a combination of Emma Watson and, like, Miranda Kerr or whatever ( YES, THAT'S HOW THE TRIP STARTED. Don't worry, it gets better later....or worse, depends on how you see it). I approached to try to talk to her, but she seemed frightened (lol). Apparently she thought I was a thief or pickpocket and tried to avoid me. I later learned that there are so many pickpockets who wait at the airports and target the tourists. I mean, i heard about it, but I didn't know it was so serious. In fact, one of the airport workers approached me later when I was wondering around and asked me bunch of questions like where I'm from and who I travel with. They never told me their true intentions, but I was pretty sure they thought I could be a pickpocket after learning that there are many of them around.

Since it was the first day, I was very excited and took a lot of pictures (which I later deleted a lot of them). London, like many cities in Europe, has an old appearance but new interior. Many buildings are renovated inside while the outside look is saved. This feels weird to me. Imagine seeing a middle age building and thinking to yourself: " This must be full of history," but then you see an "LA Fitness" sign on top of that building.......yea, this is exactly how I felt.

LA Fitness, H&M, or any modern store could
appear in these buildings. This one is a Coach.

At first I really couldn't get used to it, but I guess human is very adaptive. After seeing so many of them, these are not so weird anymore.

I thought British accent was just an accent, and I should have no problem understanding since it's still English. I was wrong. For some British, their accent is so strong (to a point that I question if it's really the British accent that I know) that you really have a hard time understanding what they are trying to say. This plus that the words they use are sometimes different from how Americans say it. Lift, chips, motorway, and biscuit (which is cookie, by the way) are just some examples.

But overall, their life style is not as what stereotype describes, at least most of them. I don't see people chilling at tea shops in the afternoon, and many of them look really busy (walking really fast, serious face, etc). I don't know how much of the stereotype I can trust.

Let's get to the tourist attraction. The first spot we went to was the London Tower (or the Tower of London), which is located near River Thames and the famous Tower Bridge and London Bridge. Oh, by the way, the London Bridge that everyone knows is actually here. The new bridge is just a plain, boring looking bridge. The Tower Bridge, though, is beautiful.

A view of Tower Bridge from far.
I apologize for the horrible photo taking skill......

Tower of London is built by William the Conqueror in 1066 . The middle of this old castle is the White Tower, which was a really solid fortress back then (it had its own well system and tons of food stored. The base of the fortress was made of layers and layers of rocks and was surrounded by water. The entrance was even high up, like on 2nd floor or something. A wooden stair was used to connect the ground and the entrance. It's wooden because they could burn it if enemies tried to enter using that.)

The White Tower, with its wooden (enhanced with metal bars) stairs.

Many of you guys may know, the tour guides often use raise flags to gather people. In many places in England (especially royal places like palaces), raising a flag is not allowed. The reason being "we love our queen and we should only raise the British flag or queen's flag, but now you're raising a flag that belongs to neither!? In a royal palace!? You gotta be kidding me!" So nope. No flag.

In this castle, the royal crown and royal scepter ( the same ones Queen Elizabeth used during her crowning. And yes, the ones with those giant diamonds) were displayed. Too bad we were not allowed to take pictures. That place also shows a video of Elizabeth II's crowning. It was pretty cool as someone tried to restore the color of that video (as color video wasn't invented at that time).

The building where royal jewels are displayed.

The guards at the castle. They look pretty friendly, and fat.

The sign says "Bloody Tower"

Here's an interesting story about one of the towers called Bloody Tower, which originally named Garden Tower. I might get the names wrong. Correct me if you find any mistake (if you even bother, that is) So this king names Charles the 2nd was reigning, but he died before his sons grew up to be old enough to take the throne. Their uncle, Richard III took the throne instead, and he placed these two princes in the Garden Tower. Many rumors say that Richard III poisoned the little princes as they all of a sudden disappeared. Some reports (can't find source) claim that they found two little kids' skeletons in the base of the chapel in White Tower. People gradually started calling the Garden Tower the Bloody Tower, because of such legend. Is it true? Since there's no official report proving such story, I would say "who cares." Lol.

Here it is, the Garden Tower, or the Bloody Tower.

Another story to be told is that there were once a lot of ravens here, and legend says that the day the ravens are gone, the throne will collapse. Therefore the king took good care of these little black birds (okay, they are actually pretty big) so his power will not be taken. Today, only 6 or 7 of these remain in the castle. People clipped their wings so they can't fly too high and escape the castle. Animal abuse? Your call.

"Can I has cheeseburgerz??"

The location where head chopping happened, lol.

There's one spot where they used to chop off royal members' heads. They have to do it in the castle area so that the news (affair, murder, assassination, etc) doesn't spread out to common people. In fact, some of king's wives died here, if I remember correctly. Now there's only a monument here. Back then the blacksmith skill was pretty bad, so the weapon they used to chop people's heads off were bad as well. It was a small axe that's not even sharp. You have to hit the SAME spot like 3 or 4 times before the head will come off.......sounds very painful.......

That's a good amount for one post. Last but not least, of course I have to get coffee, right? So here it is.

Their Mocha is too rich. Don't get it here.