London: City of London; Saturday, 28 August, 2021

An even earlier start this morning as I’d booked a 9am entry ticket for the Tower of London, so it was probably a good thing that I was staying in a hotel less than 5 minutes walk from the entrance. Despite that, there were still about 50 people ahead of me in the queue when I arrived, but given the size of the fortress that isn’t really a problem as everyone soon disappears into the different buildings and sections. I decided, that despite it not being normal times, it would probably still be best to do the Crown Jewels exhibition first to avoid any crowds later in the day. I was able to walk straight in, and in reality it wasn’t a problem as there didn’t appear to be a queue at any point whilst I was in the tower – a Summer Saturday in 2019 I could easily have been looking at an hours queue if not longer to get in.

After doing the jewels I headed over to the White Tower. This is the four towered Norman castle keep that forms part of the original tower. Today it houses a number of exhibits on the role of the tower from fortress to prison, royal mint to execution ground as well as home to a menagerie of animals that eventually were used to create London Zoo. From the White Tower I continued to wander round the complex, taking in the ramparts and various other exhibitions in the numerous towers of the fortifications, including the bloody tower where Sir Walter Raleigh spent time before his execution, and the rooms above Traitors Gate.

Despite it being almost within touching distance of the exit from the Tower of London, getting on Tower Bridge – my next stop – requires walking round three and a half sides of the Tower complex, so I was a couple of minutes late for my midday booking to ascend the bridge – it turns out that this wasn’t an issue as nobody appeared to be too bothered about the timings, just that you’d already paid. When the bridge was built towards the end of the 19th Century the Pool of London – the area between Tower and London Bridges – was still an important port and part of the requirements of the bridge was that it should be able to open to let large ships through. However, with the bridge opening in excess of 50 times a day on some days another route was required to keep at least pedestrian traffic moving, so two walkways that run high above the bridge deck were included in the design, and it these you can climb up through the tower to reach.

The views from the walkways are very impressive both for looking up and down stream, but also for getting a view of the bridge itself that you wouldn’t normally get. Part of the walkway has been replaced with a glass floor that you can walk over just to add a bit of peril to the journey. After crossing the walkway you descend back down the south tower and then walk a short distance to the south end of the bridge where you then enter the Engine room and see how the bridge was powered when it was steam driven. Something that was still happening right up into the 1970s.

Back up from the bowels of Tower Bridge’s engine room I stopped off at a nearby café for some lunch before heading over into the city of London for my next stop of the day at the London Mithraeum. This is a Roman site with a strange past. It’s one of only a handful of Roman Temples where its been possible to find out who it was dedicated to – Mithras in this case. It was originally discovered in excavations in the 1950s with the true identity only being discovered on the last day of the Archaeological dig with the discovery of a statue to Mithras. In best 1950s ways, so that the very important office block that needed to be erected could go up, the whole site was excavated, removed and relocated to street level a short distance away. Roll forward into the 21st century and that very important office block has been pulled down to make way for the new European headquarters of Bloomberg. They took the opportunity to return the Mithraeum to it’s original location, three stories below the modern street level, and today its open to explore in the location where it’s been for about 1800 of the last 1850 years.

From the Mithraeum I had a wander through the heart of the City of London, past the Bank of England, Royal Exchange and Mansion House and down into the modern financial heart of the city (as apposed to it’s second financial heart in Docklands), and to 20 Fenchurch Street. The building is more commonly known by it’s nickname – the Walkie-Talkie – and by it’s unfortunate history of melting cars – the angles of the windows on the top were set just to that they formed a parabolic mirror and focused the suns light into a couple of spots on the street below where, amongst other things, they melted a wing of a high end Jaguar car, before shading was added.

One of the other features of 20 Fenchurch Street is that it is home to London’s highest public park, with the top floors housing a terraced garden, bars and restaurants. There’s also an outside viewing deck, and as you’d expect from a building in it’s position stunning views up and down the river and South across London. The view from the north is less spectacular as behind is quite heavily crowded by other tall buildings including the cheesegrater and the gherkin. I spent quite a bit of time taking in the view from the top before returning back down to ground level and walking the short distance back to my hotel to freshen up.

Given I’d only ever seen tourists in them, I’d decided to go full tourist and I’d booked dinner in the Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse by Leicester Square tube station. It was an interesting experience, with the service really top notch, just let down by a pretty chewey and not particularly premium bit of steak (though the prawn cocktail starter and Black forest sundae either side did partly make up for the shortcomings of the main).

From Leicester Square I walk down through Trafalgar square and onto Northumberland Avenue for my evening activity – I’d booked onto a Ghost Bus Tour of London, on board an old Routemaster bus through the streets of the capital. The tour was very good, and whilst the premise is around ghosts, it’s actually an exceptionally well presented bit of comedy with the conductor/tour guide giving a stella performance for the full 90 minutes – I have no idea how he manages to do that twice a night every night!

The tour dropped up off back by Embankment station so I was able to hop on the tube and quickly get back to my hotel to turn in for the night.