Borough Market, Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, Jack the Ripper

Posted by Andrew on Sep 19, 2010 | 1 comment

Wow, today was busy! We started the morning at Borough Market in Southeast London, a farmer’s market of types with vendors selling everything from exotic meats to freshly-baked breads (and everything in between). The best part about it all was the fact that almost every vendor had samples you could try of their delicious offerings. Every booth had a specialty and some of the cheese shops were just amazing, many selling cheese from just one area of the world. One of the best things we found that Cheryl recommended was this little booth called Pate Moi which sells nothing but a delicious creamy pate made of a mix of beautiful woodsy mushrooms. I bought two containers in the hope that the American Customs Agents will be nice and let me keep them. I’m crossing my fingers already. We also bought some delicious caramel chocolate and a jar of a spicy pepper jam. Yum! Another highlight was an amazing french butter with crunchy sea salt. We supplemented all that sampling with croissants and coffee and that was basically breakfast and lunch for us.

Next it was on to Westminster Abbey which we missed the first day when we saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. (Westminster Abbey is literally next door.) Unfortunately when we got there, it was closed in preparation for a visit from the Pope. We were able to get some amazing photos however of the outside of the building which is just magnificent. There were people and news crews everywhere so we cut our visit short and hopped on the Tube to the Tower of London. The Tower of London, famous for the executions and torture of prisoners for centuries also houses the Crown Jewels which turned out to be both of our favorite part of the Tower. We got to see them up close and personal in all their sparkling glory, even the Royal Sceptre which holds The Great Star of Africa, the largest cut diamond in the world weighing in at over 530 carats. It was breathtaking! The only disappointment was that they didn’t allow photography, but we understood why. Also noteworthy were the modern exhibit on armor made for English kings and the display of torture implements.

At 7:30 we strolled over to the Tube station and met our tour guide Steve for the Jack the Ripper walk. What a fun and slightly morbid way to spend the evening. Our guide took us through dark alleyways and described, in grisly detail, each of the five murders. We were able to visit the location of three of them on the tour, even poor Mary Jane Kelly whose place of demise is now a lovely four story parking garage. Okay, so many of the places have been morphed into more modern buildings, but a few of the locations still looked similar to what they did in the late 1800s when the murders took place. He also spent some time describing a half dozen of the main suspects in the cases. Despite being tired from being on our feet all day, Steve kept us awake and entertained (except for Andrew’s brief nod off against the wall) with his riveting descriptions of the how the events unfolded. He was an excellent performer and we enjoyed it immensely. You would think that after all that, our adventures for the day would be over, but no. Steve, although a great tourguide, spent two hours walking us in what appeared to be circles and then left us somewhere completely different than (and a mile away from) where we started. It was now 9:30 p.m. and we already missed the closest Tube station (Steve’s directions weren’t the best) and just kept walking to a station we were familiar with. At the beginning of our walk, there were lots of people around filling up noisy pubs, but as we kept walking there were less and less people and the people that were around were more and more intoxicated. We were lucky enough to see only two people urinating in public. Thank goodness only one was facing us while doing so. In spite of the drunkards it still seemed pretty safe, as long as you could avoid being hit by a taxi. We finally got to Cheryl and Mickey’s place around 10:30 p.m. ready for bed. I am writing this in the morning because I again fell asleep with the laptop in my lap. Au revior for now, Chelsie and Andrew