Day 5: Morning in the Sky, Afternoon at the Tower

June 18, 2025

[Descriptive text is coming as soon as we have a time to catch up!]

London (as well as much of northwest Europe) was experiencing a hot spell during our week there. The weather was getting warmer and forecasted to continue to warm up through the week. The temperatures were in the high 70s the first couple of days, but would head to the low 90s by the day of our departure. While not terribly hot for Pennsylvania, this is hot for London. Many places in London are air conditioned, but many places in London that you'd expect to be air conditioned in the States are not. Our hotel had air conditioning, but not all do. Some pubs have it, some do not. Many museums do not have air conditioning. Thankfully, there always seemed to be a breeze, and the humidity was relatively low.

Today we planned to do two things and see what our energy level allowed beyond that. The first was recommended by several YouTube videos on London sights that we watched in preparation for our trip. The Sky Garden is a 360 degree viewing area atop a skyscraper in central London. The garden occupies the top three stories on one of the tallest buildings (525 ft) in London. From afar, the building has a prominent bulge toward the top to accommodate the garden, and it seems to overarch part of one of the streets below. The upper (38th) story looks north, and the lower (36th) story looks south. The east and west sides of the garden have windowed staircases between the floors. There is an outdoor terrace accessible from the lower story. In the center of the lower story is a stand were you can buy food, alcoholic and non-alcoholic refreshments, and snacks. There is also a brasserie selling basic pub food. Throughout the garden are spots to sit, relax, and enjoy the view. The best thing about the Sky Garden is that it's free. You need to make a 1-hour time-slot reservation to take the elevator to the top. You need to make the reservation on the Monday three weeks before your visit, and the free tickets go fast. It's best to get an early time slot. We found that the ticket takers at the entrance to the building were not too picky about the time slot on your ticket: we got there about an hour before our slot, but they let us up the elevator. And were glad we did, because the place got more crowded the longer we stayed.

The Sky Garden is not the only building in London from which to catch a great view. The Shard, the second tallest building in Europe outside of Russia, is nearly twice the height of the Sky Garden. But the view from up there will cost you about $40. We got a great view free of charge.

We had a great time looking at London from above, but after about an hour, it was getting more crowed, so we took the elevator down to find our way to our next stop, the Tower of London.

View of the Sky Garden from below. The building widens at the top, accommodating the large garden.

The Sky Garden has two tiers for a 360 degree view of London connected by two-story staircases.

Looking down from the upper to the lower level of the Sky Garden

St. Paul's Cathedral from the Sky Garden

Morning coffee at the Sky Garden

Downriver view toward the Tower Bridge

Lower level of the Sky Garden

The Shard, a taller building with a pricier view

An outdoor terrace above London

Construction hard hat flower part hanging at a construction zone near the Sky Garden.

From the Sky View, we walked a bit an caught the subway to the Tower of London, known officially as is Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London. The Tower of London was constructed in late 1066 by William the Conqueror shortly after the Norman Conquest. The Tower is not a single building but a fortress with inner and outer walls, a large interior courtyard, and numerous residences built over time to house the various people who had important positions within the Tower. It has played a prominent role in English history. It has been besieged several times, and controlling it has been important to controlling the country. At various times the Tower has served as a royal residence, an armory, a garrison, a military training ground, a treasury, a prison, a menagerie, the home of the Royal Mint, a public record office, and the home of the Crown Jewels of England.

Visiting the Tower isn't cheap: about $50, but the place tries to give you your money's worth. Its history helps, as the place is loaded with it, and there are numerous museums within holding all kinds of jewels, literal and figurative. We got there early enough in the day that it wasn't terribly crowded yet, so we decided to see the Crown Jewels first. As we walked through the interior courtyard toward the building housing the jewels, we noticed several banded ravens perched about. The captive ravens are the spiritual protectors of the Kingdom (based on a relatively recent myth). The intelligent and chatty birds seem happy with the attention they get, though you shouldn't approach them too confidently. They also know the fate of the Kingdom lies with them and are suspicious of the reaching hands of others.

The Crown Jewels are amazing: crowns, decorated swords, silver place settings for large banquets, and other bejeweled objects. No photography was allowed, but the web site will give you a good idea of what's there.

After seeing the jewels, we spent some time exploring the grounds. There were numerous structures built over the centuries of the Tower's existence. Prisons and holding cells, armories, meeting halls - there seemed to be no end. We got to see the large collection of royal weaponry and armor, both for the kings and their horses. I don't thing Henry VIII ever led an army into battle, but he was certainly outfitted to do so. The armor must have been fitted when he was a younger man, because it did not look like the armor of a particularly stout knight.

We got to see the rooms where Walter Raleigh was kept under house arrest for many years. Raleigh, a court favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, was a statesman, explorer, and adventurer who played a key roll in the early colonization of North America by the British. He also got himself into trouble on several occasions and spent a lot of time imprisoned in the Tower. In 1603, Raleigh was imprisoned in the Tower for 14 years by James I for the part he had taken in the plots against James's succession to the throne. After he was pardoned in 1617 by James, he was put in charge of an expedition to Venezuala, but that ended in his final undoing. The actions of his men there nearly provoked a war with Spain, which which England had an uneasy peace since the failed invasion and the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Raleigh was brought back to England and executed in 1618. We had fun talking to a re-enactor who played the role of Raleigh during his earlier long imprisonment.

The Tower of London from outside

Tower Raven

He loves his perch

The Tower was once used as a menagerie

Henry the VIII's armor. That big boy could ride!

More armor

Tower Loo. No TP

Lots of armor

The Tower was once used for gunpowder storage

At various places around the inside and outside of the Tower grounds we say large displays of ceramic red poppies. They are a small part of an art installation created at the 80th anniversary of the end of WW I commemorating the nearly million lives lost by the British in that global conflict. These poppies had been displayed all over the country. There are now 30,000 of the poppies scattered in groups about the Tower grounds.

A poppy memorial to WW I soldiers was all over the Tower grounds

Poppies under a water gate.

As mid-afternoon approached, we wanted to see one more thing: the torture rooms in the Tower. But there was some tree trimming going on in the courtyard. This meant that the torture rooms were not accessible until the tree work was done. Our son Andy is an arborist and through we've seen videos of some impressive tree trimming machinery. We decided to wait in the heat and watch the trimmers work. The work part was fun, but it seemed to take them forever to clean up the cut branches and sawdust. While we waited we got to hear a couple of Tower guards give talks to different groups of tourists. Finally, after about an hour, the way to the torture prison was opened and we got to visit.

Torture was employed over the centuries at the Tower, but only a relative few cases have been documented. Guy Fawkes, who led the Gunpowder Plot against James 1, was known to have been tortured at the Tower, suspended by manacles. Methods employed included the rack (stretching a prisoner), the Scavenger's daughter (compressing the prisoner), and manacles (suspending a prisoner by his arms). All were usually effective in causing great pain extracting information.