Wednesday 2nd April: Tower of London, Tate Modern, Beatles at RAH

Now we're back in London for our second week-long adventure.

We got to see what the breakfast was like at the Norfolk Towers.  This time the hot meal was an extra expense but we were both quite content with the other options; multiple cereals and milk, a dish of raisins, dried apricots, juices, coffee or tea, multiple options of breads, croissants and rolls, fruit salad, peaches in syrup, jams and butter, a toaster, yogurt and I'm sure something else in there for good measure.

After that, we were off with our updated Oyster cards for the tube to our first and penultimate tour, the Tower of London.  The tube station was right across the street there is a modern entrance under the major boulevard there. Your first sight out of the tunnel is of the outer perimeter wall and the main or "white" tower behind it.  I took some photos and a short video of the view, then we proceeded around to the main entrance. It was an overcast day with only a hint of blue visible.

First glimpse of Tower of London and pedestrian underpass

View of corner of The Tower complex just out of underpass

 We had purchased tickets when we first arrived, about $25 each, so we were able to walk right in without a line at about 10:50AM on a weekday. Later in the afternoon there was a huge line!.  We were just in time for the 11AM tour, given by a "Beefeater", or Yoman of the Beefeater Guard, a 26 year military veteran of the Royal Fusiliers who explained  that one must have at least 22 years of honorable military service to qualify for the post and that all of the Yomen live on the grounds with their families.  He walked us past the so-called "Traitor's gate", a water entrance where many prisoners entered the Tower complex for execution; this was now sealed off from the river.

Traitor's Gate entrance, now sealed off

The "Tower" is actually one main tower, surrounded by a later wall with multiple protective towers, and then a much later outer wall with even more towers,a total of 20 in all.

The Romans established the first fortification here about 40AD on the site of a previous Celtic village. The site had strategic importance for being located on a slight hill on an otherwise flat plain and for its protected access to the sea on the Thames which  here is close enough to the sea to be a tidal basin.

When the Roman Empire collapsed in 400AD more or less, they abandoned the site and it fell into ruin.  However, when the Galic people who called themselves Normans invaded in 1066 and conquered the Celts and Anglo Saxons that lived here, their leader, William the Conqueror recognized the location for its importance once again and had a wooden fort built on the site immediately. He then began constructing the main Tower a decade later, about 1078, I believe.  That tower was about 4 stories and at the time was the tallest structure in England.  The structure was white-washed for effect, and subsequently was called the White Tower ever since, though today the original stone walls don't seem to have any white color.

White Tower from the river

Inside view of Traitor's Gate, originally called the "Water Gate"

The whole complex was built up by various different kings over the centuries to be a residence for the monarchs until 1703 and also a military fortress.  It was never attacked, partially because of its imposing defenses and even survived the Nazi blitz without serious damage.

The Beefeater was informative and funny, very good natured, and made a pleasant hour-long introduction to the place.  We proceeded to see the Crown Jewels, walked through the White Tower (most of it is accessible and filled with mostly displays.) There is a very austere and medieval chapel in the Tower, but no photos allowed there. We ventured to go to the dungeons to see the instruments of medieval torture there; Guy Fawkes was kept and tortured here so that he would name his co-conspirators in his plot to blow up Parliament; that day forever celebrated each year with fireworks, November 5th; Guy Fawkes day.

We were told about the legend of the ravens which once were abundant and considered a pest but one of the early kings mandated that they be preserved and a story sprang up that said that, "the Kingdom and the Tower will fall if the six remaining ravens ever leave the fortress."  There are always at least 7 in residence, for superstitious reasons.  I've never seen a Raven before up close, plenty of crows in the Sacramento Valley, but never a raven.  They are bigger than crows and have larger beaks.  I watched two of them pecking at each others bills in what looked like an amorous  kissing session!

The White Tower from courtyard, called the "Inner Ward"

Grenadier Guard

Inner ward with White Tower to left, Waterloo Barracks to right

The Waterloo Barracks where the crown jewels are stored

Small selection of armor collection on display

Wire animals representing the Menagerie

View from White tower with Shard

Kissing ravens (not crows!)

Scale model of Tower of London on display in the White Tower.  I added some helpful captions

Aerial view from web; no parking lot now (upper left), Tower Bridge at lower right

By the time we had seen most of what we wanted to see but by no means all of it, 4 hours had passed.  I could write a thesis on all the historical minutiae attached to the Tower's long and eventful history there. We left through the river gate (opposite side from the street where we came in, near the Traitor's Gate, on the river side of the Tower) and found a cute little snack shack with its own little seating area, and bought a little lunch, again a nice baguette sandwich with chips and a coke for me, a soup and roll for Evie.

Nice little lunch stand on quay in front of the Tower

We watched as literally thousands of people came by, several tour buses at a time, and people from all over the world.  I took some photos of the Tower Bridge directly behind us, and I overheard a couple of young women talking in Spanish and asked them to take a picture of us.  They were from Barcelona and gladly took several from different angles resulting in a pretty decent shot!

The two travelers with Tower Bridge

When we were sufficiently rested, we walked back around to the street and found a bus to take us to Ludgate Hill, a short walk to the Millenium bridge which is a pedestrian bridge across the Thames that leads directly to the Tate Modern Art Museum. We had passed under this on our first day, during the river cruise.  We encountered another living statue there; this one of a guy looking like one of Rene Magritte's surrealistic paintings.

Millenium bridge from the Thames

Magritte painting comes alive

Tate Modern from theThames

Evie on Millennium bridge

Tate Modern up close on cloudy day

The Tate is a reuse of an old coal fired power station and it sits right on the Thames river bank; the neighborhood itself is called Bankside and its exterior is rather bleak with one single smoke stack on one side.  The interior was not much of an improvement it seemed; stark with one huge open space, 4 stories or so tall and devoid of anything; no large sculptures or displays of any kind, and four stories of galleries alongside.  I thought it was quite a waste of a great opportunity to display some large scale works there.

4 stories of empty space in the Tate Modern

The galleries had some important pieces by Picasso, Braque and many other modern artists but the only Kandinsky was a very early piece and not a great example at all.  There was a nice black sculpture by Henry Moore and some large spaces with weird installations.

Henry Moore sculpture

Installations in one of the rooms

Art work with painting behind

There were the required pieces of worthless art like a large black canvas with barely discernible shades of lighter black on it and a framed mirror.  We used it to create our own art piece by doing a self portrait. You can see my little Samsung point-and-shoot.

My own masterpiece and Evie's favorite; a self portrait in mirror disguised as "art"

I didn't find anything by Matisse who is one of my favorites but saw lots of quite unimpressive art images; I finally found a temporary exhibit of the American photographer Harry Callahan which was of interest since I have a book of his photos in my library at home.

Young people gathered below

There was a cafe and outdoor patio and I shot a photo of the bridge and St. Peter's on the other side. Not the best day for it.

Millennium Bridge and North side of river, featuring the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral

After an hour or so, we made our exit and walked back over the bridge to the Blackfriars corner, named after a friary in the area from 1278 and took the tube home from there.

Cafe at the Blackfriar's corner, near bridge and tube stop of the same name

We had scarcely time to freshen up before our appointment with Beatles destiny at the Royal Albert Hall, one of the highlights of the trip for me for sure.

We took another tube to just south of the Royal Albert Hall, grabbed a couple of sandwiches at the station and ate them while we hastily walked the 4 or 5 blocks.  Picked up the tickets at will call and found our seats just as they were announcing 2 minutes to show time!  Main floor, row 20.

The Bootleg Beatles came out after a video introduction featuring music from the early 60's with images from TV of the time and immediately started into "Hard Day's Night".  The did great renditions of the early material with the suits and then transitioned to Rubber Soul era clothes and hair.

Bootleg Beatles at Royal Albert Hall in Sgt. Pepper attire

After a brief intermission, they came back with Sgt. Pepper clothing, this time with a woodwind quartet on one side and a string quartet on the other and proceeded to run through part of Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour before doing a creative transition; George had left briefly during one number and came back with jeans and shirt and longer hair and then stayed out on his own for an acoustic guitar version of "While my Guitar Gently Weeps", with the strings adding some depth. This was a version quite unlike anything they ever did.  Then the rest came back in the casual jeans look of "Let it Be" era, and did some stuff from Abbey Road, the White Album, and Let it Be.  The horns were used to great effect several times, the sound was good, the bass player was left handed, and all of them had the familiar body language that was characteristic and unique.  I've always loved seeing John and Paul (or Paul and George) singing at the same mike; no one else ever did that in my recollection.They did a terrific rendition of "A Day in the Life", with its famous line about how many holes there were in the Albert Hall.  "John" had asked earlier if there were any visitors from Poland, and when someone raised their hand, he joked that now we knew how many "Poles" there were to fill the Albert hall. Everyone got it, I'm sure.

Getting a good picture with my little point-and-shoot camera took some doing and I found the shutter speed on auto mode was too slow causing blurry shots, so during the intermission I overrode that by putting in the fastest shutter speed available and hoped for the best; some turned out acceptably well.

"John" at Magical Mystery tour piano

They played until about 10 from a 7:30 start, so it was a good show, missing many of my favorites but admittedly there wasn't time for everything.  I shared my enthusiasm with a couple people on the way out who were also very jazzed.

We jumped on the first bus to pass by and got off at a tube stop to find our way back to the hotel in short order.  Tired after another long day, but very satisfied!