The Tower of London

Our time here in London seems to be drawing to a close. We only teach for about 5 more weeks, take a little time off for the Jubilee and then, Deo Volente, hop a plane for home sweet home. Our list of things we can’t wait to do when we’re back is growing by the day.

Of course, this all means we have to get through our list of things we can only do in London rather quickly. The number of weekends we have free is painfully inadequate to see and experience everything people have told us to and that we’ve wanted to. But, in the spirit of getting through as much as we can, we’ve decided to - as much as possible - get out and be touristy just about each chance we get.

Last Saturday’s manifestation of this impulse was a trip to see the Tower of London. Now, I did something very foolish this time; I forgot my camera at home. None of the pictures you are about to see are mine; they’re courtesy of Google Image search and I deeply hope I’m not violating any really important copyright law by republishing them here.

Also, I’m writing now, not only because it was only yesterday someone recommended I write a blog entry in spite of the absence of authentic photos, but also because I’m home sick. You can chalk up any longish pauses between sentences to orange juice and kleenex breaks.

For most North Americans, the Tower of London is something you feel like you’ve heard of but you don’t really know very much about it. Many people connect it with prisoners and torture, which is certainly the main selling feature. For centuries, important political prisoners and more than a couple big famous people were imprisoned and/or executed here.

The first misnomer, though, is to call it a tower. When I hear “tower”, I think one solid high structure. Not a multi-building complex enclosed by walls that looks a bit like this:

When I see something like that, I think “castle” or “fortress”. I think both would be good ways to describe the “Tower”.

Of course, the name comes, I think, from the first component that was ever there, built by the Norman William the Conqueror when he became King of England in the 1060s. He built a ring of larger castles outside London to control it, but put a fortified royal palace, the White Tower, right on the edge of it overlooking the Thames

Today, the White Tower is home to some really cool winding stone staircases straight out of the movies as well as one of the world's best Medieval armor and weapons collections. Highlights included a full suit of armour for a small child (think 3 years old; that's how big it was) right next to the largest suit of armour on Earth; more than 7 ft tall. Also, a couple cool interactive exhibits where you get to see how bad the peripheral vision in a helmet was and how heavy a matchlock musket is to lift. I think they might have been for the kids, but Alyssa just kind of smiled while I tried them out.

For me, though, the big highlight was the guided Beefeater tour. The Beefeaters are a real life military order in the British Armed Forces (though their real name is Yeoman Warders)

Most of them are veteran servicemen and war heroes, mainly from the army. But they're not retired. Every now and again, Yeoman Warders get taken off tour guide duty and put into combat situations. Not often, I don't think, but sometimes. They are a fighting wing of the military.

Ours was awesome. We got to it a bit late and so didn't catch his name. He was a little gruff and a lot of his jokes were just edgy enough that you worried he might actually offend someone. But I felt like that was part of the experience. That's who these men are, and who they always have been. Army guys. Who better to show us around?

The tour started by the entrance. There is only one land-based entrance to the Tower complex, a bridge that runs over the moat.

Somebody asked why the moat was so wide, and the Beefeater said it was because this was not Disneyland. The Tower was surrounded by a real working moat that, before the wharf was extended, connected to the waters of the Thames. The Thames essentially flushed it out. Today it's a gorgeous and lush green lawn that encircles the tower, and this might have something to do with the fact that several hundred people living inside the tower and around the moat used the moat as a septic tank. Apparently, and I'm not making this up, it may have once contained some polar bears, too. The royal menagerie was kept next to the moat and so any unhappy peasant who wanted to defy the monarch was in for a bear-dodging, poop-pushing, arrow-evading swim.

If you could get across the river of nightmares, you still had not one but two lines of defensive walls to scale or break down; the interior one higher than the exterior. The Tower is ringed with towers; including a few Muslim-inspired circular ones that were better at absorbing shock and could have heavy weapons like catapults mounted on them. Our Beefeater led us to see this tower, with a big main gate to get into the inner courtyard.

 The Bloody tower is where, allegedly, the little princes were murdered during the wars of the roses. This is one of my big historical blind spots and so I know almost nothing besides what the guide said; the boys were a political threat and went missing. Not long ago an excavation found two child's bodies who are believed to be the princes. No progress yet on determining the culprit, but our guide gave us his theory.

This is the Traitor's Gate. This was where many prisoners entered the tower. The grate opened up onto the river (before the modern extension of the wharf). Famous prisoners include Queen Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife imprisoned and executed for treason (i.e. cheating on him). Also, Captain John Smith in Pocahontas II. All told, the Tower of London was not mainly a prison. It had a busy period of a couple hundred years, including Henry VIII's lifetime and a bit before and after. But it's also one of the least secure prisons in Britain; there were a number of successful escapes; something like 4% of prisoners put into the tower actually got away. This is because it's a small sample size; over its whole lifetime the Tower only housed a few hundred prisoners. 

 One kind of kitchy bit of Tower folklore is that London will always be safe so long as the ravens are in the tower. So they built a cage to keep a few of them there. And, according to Rick, had to install some big complicated apparatus to help them mate because their numbers were dwindling. We saw a couple. We see ravens all over London; it didn't feel like a big deal. But we saw the cage.

The last really cool thing they have inside the Tower is the British Crown Jewels. The exhibit itself is really nicely put together, with this warm-up video getting you thinking about the monarchy and the emblems of the monarch's authority and responsibilities, lots of video of Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and then the main event; a few well-lit display cases with a moving floor beside them to keep traffic moving. Which felt a little weird. We took a couple passes to figure everything out. 

The jewels include some of the most impressive jewels on earth, including the 530+ carat Cullinan I diamond (aka the Great Star of Africa) in the scepter and the Koh-i-Noor diamond (105 carats) set in the Queen Mother's crown. Very shiny. The Cullinan is, right now, the second largest diamond on earth, I think. Which is nothing to sneeze at. Oddly enough, despite the immense value of the things there, I didn't feel bombarded by security. We didn't even go through a metal detector. I'm sure there was something subtle and yet ruthlessly efficient set up in the shadows. Very English.

After strolling about to our hearts content, we decided to bid the Tower farewell. Thanks for joining me on this google-sponsored blog post. 

Oh, a random request for those people who agreed to take a look at my novel manuscript a couple months ago: it would be nice to hear back from one of you. Even if the book is crap, just let me know you read it. I know it's crap; my feelings won't be hurt. I'd just like the feedback before I get very far into something new I've been thinking about.

Euroadventure: Last stop: Amsterdam

Amsterdam was always our if-we-can-find-time-at-the-end stop. We were only there a day. But I think, all things considered, we did a pretty good job of squeezing a full day of Dutch sightseeing out of our one day and our four tired legs.
We started the day with a walk through the Red Light district to some famous churches and squares, since we did want to at least see the infamous neighbourhood for ourselves and we thought it would be pretty empty and lifeless in the early morning.

Amsterdam is a city built on canals. It actually has more canals than Venice! And it has one of the most 17th century-esque townhouse collections in all of Europe. Big parts of the city have gone unchanged for centuries.

Oude Kerk, or "Old Kerk" A big cathedral/church in the heart of the Red Light district, although I'm given to understand the church predates its slightly more risque neighbours.

A flower stand in Nieumarkt. Lots of - surprise - tulips!

This one might need some explanation. When I saw this corn-on-the-cob seller in Nieumarkt I almost laughed out loud. My Mom told me an old story about how her Dutch immigrant mother never gave them corn on the cob when they were little because Dutch people didn't think of corn on the cob as people food. Corn on the cob, according to my Oma, was pig food.
Well, guess what, Oma? Apparently there are enough Dutch people who disagree to keep this vendor in business.
Then again, it's easy for me to be brave about it; I'm pretty sure my Oma doesn't read the blog. Not unless my Mom shows it to her.

This is our only photo of the Red Light district. This little church was set up right next to a big sex club and paraphernalia shop. I wonder what the story of the place was.

Eventually we got tired of walking back and forth so we decided to splurge on a canal boat tour of some of sites. Plus, the lineup at the Anne Frank house was so long we would have wasted half the day there.

This is a bicycle parking garage next to the central train station. It houses about 3000 bicycles. Regardless, another 9000 are still parked illegally around the station on average EVERY DAY. Plans are in the works for a big bike garage upgrade. Nuts.

 The boat tour was nice but we eventually saw a neighbourhood nice enough to explore that didn't make us feel seedy. The big parks and nice little cafes was a much more serene and peaceful way to spend our day.

 We rounded it all off with a big classy dinner at a nice Indonesian place near the hostel. For those of you who don't know, this isn't cheating. Eating Indonesian in Holland is like eating Indian in England. Or eating American in Canada. It's so commonly consumed it's practically local cuisine. We had a full Reistafel (spelling?) with all the fixings just for the two of us. Some of it was great but I think I prefer how my Mom puts it together.

 We didn't get a good look at the Dutch countryside on our way in, but the way out was much nicer. I got a couple blurry photos of windmills, but the fields of multicoloured tulips are what really blew me away.

We got to Brussels in time to catch our train back across the channel and back to the UK. All told, we had a lot of hours on trains and a lot of diverse experiences to chew on for the foreseeable future. Our holiday here ends on Monday, and I think we're both happy to be back in an English-speaking country and cooking our own food for a change, but I'm proud that we were able to see so many different places - albeit briefly - in one excellent 10-day adventure. Thank you all for your prayers of safety. If you have questions, etc. let me know. Til we get around to updating again, Ciao!

Euroadventure Stop 5: Bern, Switzerland

 We arrived in Bern off the train early afternoon on Saturday. Waiting for us on the platform was the smiling, familiar face of our much-beloved friend Brad. Man, was it good to see a familiar face after so long! And so refreshing to speak Canadian again, too.

Brad's working and studying with YWAM in a small town called Wiler outside Bern, so he toured us around town for a bit before bringing us back to Wiler for dinner and beds at the base.
Bern is one of the three largest cities in Switzerland, even though it's less than 400,000 strong. No city in Switzerland, not even famous ones like Geneva or Zurich, has half a million people. The whole country is about 8m, which means that they're really evenly distributed and many of them live in quite small towns. By all accounts the Swiss enjoy a really high quality of life, and Brad showed us all the pretty and impressive things, but he showed us the dark side of their prosperity and where the gospel is still needed in a place like this.

These gardens were all spread out behind the Parliament buildings

Ironically, even though we were still just a stone's throw from the capitol buildings, this park is a major hub for the Bern sex industry. Brad's team is working on issues of social injustice and so he had a wealth of information on the subject of the dark truths behind Bern's smiling wealthy facade.

This gorgeous river runs through town, and we took a very nice stroll along the river bank. it was nice to breathe fresh air again.

Along the path by the river were a whole bunch of these things: workout and gym equipment with little signs showing how to use them. As if joggers are meant to stop to do some parallel bars before continuing their routine.

When I saw this I could hardly resist snapping a photo. We haven't been to Amsterdam yet, and already European attitudes towards cannabis were showing themselves. The laws there are similar to the ones in Canada, but I guess relaxed enough to allow pot drinks in vending machines. My question: why are the labels only in English when the Swiss speak German and/or French?

 On Sunday, Brad took us to an international church in Bern. He and his fellow students/missionaries usually go to the English service, but since it was Easter the English congregation was doing a joint service with the German and French congregations that use the same building. The result was a multilingual, multicultural worship experience like I've never been in before. It was so cool to sing songs you know but in words you don't. Singing worship in German, praying in French, hearing teaching in all 3; it was quite an experience.
After service, we and Brad's team were invited to the English pastor's cottage out in the country for Easter lunch. I got a few more shots of the beautiful Swiss countryside and we got to meet some really really cool people doing ministry in this place.

I think it's safe to say we enjoyed Bern and Switzerland way more than I thought we would. I thought it would be nice to see a friend and take a break on our way back to the UK. Instead we were encouraged, refreshed, and invigorated by the beauty and the energy of the place we were in. It was awesome. If any NCCFers reading this haven't been keeping touch with Brad, fire him an email. The work he and his team are doing is really awesome and I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you about it if your ask.

Euroadventure stop 4: Rome: Days 3 and 4

For our third day, we decided to do less trucking around and more soaking and being. We started the day getting to a little park overlooking the Colloseum, which took us conveniently past the church of St Peter-in-Chains

Moses, by Michelangelo. This photo is awful. Hard to do a good shot from a point and shoot with no flash or tripod. What i can't figure out is why Michelangelo gave Moses horns?

These chains are actually two sets; one from Peter's imprisonment in Jerusalem and one from his imprisonment before his execution in Rome. According to sources, when the two relics were brought together, they supernaturally snapped together to form one solid line of chain. Are they real? Dunno. Are relics an important part of my faith in Christ? Not really, but if anyone wants to explain it to me I'm open to being convinced. Fire me an email.

Our picnic spot. Yep. That's the Colloseum in the background. We're like, totally over it by now.

 For the late afternoon/evening, we decided to take a walking tour from our guidebook through the "Heart of Rome"

Piazza Navona. Not only is it huge, interesting, and filled with gorgeous fountains and enigmatic street performers, but half of it is swarming with street artists. This used to be the site of a roman race course and is allegedly, I think, either the site or near the site where Caesar was assassinated.

We were really really impressed with this fountain in the piazza. The four figures on the base represent rivers from the four known continents: The Nile for Africa, The Indus for Asia, the Danube for Europe and some random one we've never heard of for South America, 'cause they hadn't found the Amazon yet.

 That is, until we strolled a few blocks further to find this:

Trevi Fountain. It was swarming with people but still very impressive and very romantic.

 After taking in the fountain we strolled just a few blocks further to a little high-class restaurant where we celebrated Alyssa's birthday belatedly but in style; with a sumptuous Italian feast. We practically rolled home, we were so full of good food and wine.

The next morning, our last full day in Rome, was another slow-itinerary day. We made our way back to piazza navona to read and soak up as much hot Italian sun as we could. Then, it was some market shopping and rustic Italian pizza in Campo di Fiori before retiring for a siesta in the hotel and prepping for the evening

Trajan's column. I took some other photos the first time we passed by, but this is the one that turned out

 It was Good Friday, and we stumbled upon a nugget of information: the pope does a stations of the cross service at the Colloseum on Good Fridays. So we jogged down to the Colloseum one last time in the evening to try and catch a glimpse.

Which is precisely what we got. Just a glimpse. This is the undeniable best of 5 or 6 awful photos. The crowds were massive. But it was him, alright. If we get to see the Queen this June, it'll be a really big year for world leader encounters.

The next morning we were up and early to catch our train to Switzerland. We bid farewell to the Eternal City with a heavy heart, but excited about the prospect of spending Easter weekend with the closest thing to family we have on-continent.

Euroadventure stop 4: Rome: Day 2

Day 1 was classical Rome. We decided to start Day 2 off with the Vatican City (since we didn't want to put it off until the weekend; God only knows how crazy the Vatican would have been on Good Friday) A short, crowded tube trip away we joined the thronging pilgrim crowds on their way to a very long lineup outside the Vatican city walls to get into the main attraction: the Vatican museum.
Now, many people are not huge into museums. I'll confess to being a museum geek, but this is no ordinary museum. The Vatican museum is literal kilometres of gallery space including original renaissance masterworks and some of the best ancient artifacts in collections anywhere, too. And it has the main event: Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel! The museum is actually the big unused parts of the old papal palaces; from back when popes weren't just religious leaders but also civil and military ones, too.

 The wall. A little weird that a place meant to be so holy would seem so foreboding. But we decided to take it as more a reminder of the papacy's history than a disincentive to visit.

 First was an Ancient statuary section, including this one strikingly realistic Egyptian Anubis. I mean, except for the dog's head thing.

The grounds were gorgeous, and this was just one view from the galleries. The boards set up around the perimeter are diagrams of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and tour guides take their groups here to the picture to explain before they go to the chapel since it gets so super-crowded.

The Laocoon. Troy's high priest and his sons are devoured by snakes. Seeing it in person, you get nervous and uncomfortable on their behalf.

When I say kilometers of gallery space, I mean it. LONG hallways full of paintings, tapestries, and statuary.

The Vatican City parking lot. I'll bet the red Fiat is the pope's.

Wall painting depicting Constantine's victory

St Peter being freed from prison.

Raphael's school of Athens. Yeah. THE school of Athens, on a wall in this building. The tragedy: by this point most people were so tired they were just shuffling through to get to the Chapel.

Now for the bad news: no Sistine photos. It was against the rules and I don't blame them. It was an absolute ZOO in there. Suffice to say we had cricks in our neck from staring at the ceiling, but it was super-gratifying to see it with our own eyes.
 After the chapel we shuffled back out of the museum, grabbed a panini for lunch, and then strolled round the corner to St Peter's Sq and Basilica.

Most of my attempts at using the panorama feature on the camera have been a bit wonky. It's a bit distorted, but I hope it helps capture how big the space felt.

You can always tell which one is Peter, because he's got keys.

Chairs were set up, empty, from this morning's papal audience. We went to the museum instead, trying to avoid the crowds.

The Swiss guards. A passer-by who heard me wonder aloud confirmed that they are still actually Swiss.

The basilica facade.

The line was so long and the sun so hot we decided that, at best, St Peter's would be just another big, impressive old church and decided to make back towards central Rome to spend the afternoon living La Dolce Vita. We hopped back on the train and got off at the Spanish Steps

The Spanish Steps

Piazza del Popolo. This Oval-shaped plaza was, in days of yore, the fancy entry point for pilgrims coming from the north of the city.

There are three streets leading south into the city here, bisected by these 2 churches. the centre strip runs to the Colloseum and the Forum. The left avenue runs to Santa Maria Maggiore (a big pilgrim church and, incidentally, right next to our convent), and the right one down to the Vatican.

 We decided to camp out here in the piazza for a while. We found a bench in the shade, read our books, and enjoyed the sounds of street performers and pushy flower salesmen. We'd planned to take in the haute couture and fine dining off the main street here from the piazza in the evening but the later it got the more the last two days' adventuring got to us, so we trucked back to our home neighborhood and went out for really really nice pizza, instead.