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Boating on the River Thames

After getting a photo of myself in front of the Tower of London, I followed the dock to the boats, showed my ticket receipt to the man, and he waved me past. I found a seat near the front of the boat, dropped my gear again, and got comfortable. I couldn't wait until we pulled away.
Moments later the crew cast off, the engines growled and the Captain took us out into the mighty River Thames. I was very excited.
The first sight we saw was part of the Tower of London called the Traitor's Gate. It was right on the river's edge and allowed access to the prison area by boat.
Traitors Gate was originally known as Water Gate, but was later changed when it was used as the landing for the Crown's enemies. The water gate under St Thomas's Tower has been known for over 400 years as 'Traitors' Gate' because of the number of prisoners, accused of treason, which have passed through it. Unfortunate and important state prisoners were committed to the Tower of London through the River Thames entrance.
The journey of these prisoners was made by barge along the River Thames. Often their journey would take them past London Bridge where the heads of recently executed traitors were displayed on the roof of the stone gatehouse.
The heads were placed on spikes, attached to poles and displayed on the Bridge. The young and tragic Catherine Howard had to pass the gruesome sight of the head of her lover Thomas Culpepper on her journey to the Tower of London and Traitors Gate. This grisly practice continued until around 1678.

According to legend when Princess Elizabeth arrived on Palm Sunday 1554 she refused at first to land at the gate, angrily proclaiming that she was no traitor. A sharp shower of rain however, caused her to change her mind. Later when, as Queen, she visited the Tower she insisted on passing through Traitors Gate. "What was good enough for Elizabeth the Princess is good enough for Elizabeth the Queen", she is supposed to have told the Constable.

HMS Belfast: The plan for HMS Belfast was conceived in 1936 when the admiralty decided to build 2 "Southampton" class cruisers to boost their Naval fleet. Launched on 17th march 1938 HMS Belfast the Belfast became part of the Naval fleet in the following year. With the outbreak of War HMS Belfast was sent to patrol Northern waters where it secured the capture of SS Cap Norte- the largest vessel to be captured in naval history.
In retaliation HMS Belfast was mined and the damage so severe that it took three years to repair the vessel. HMS Belfast was one of the first ships to fire on enemy positions during the D-Day landings in 1944. Over the next six weeks, HMS Belfast provided naval support- firing thousands of rounds upon various targets along the Normandy coast.
After operational tours in Korea and the China seas, HMS Belfast was finally decommissioned in 1963- having sailed almost 500,000 miles for the Royal Navy.
HMS Belfast escaped dismantlement and it is now permanently docked near Morgan's Lane. Standing as a living monument to the engineering feat of its creation and a reminder of the battles in which it served.

Cleopatra's Needles are a trio of ancient Egyptian obelisks in London, Paris, and New York City. I have seen two of them, the London one (obviously) and the one in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Seeing as how it is so close to where I live, I really should get my ass in gear, go to New York City, and see the third one, thus completing the hat trick… Each obelisk is made of red granite, stands about 21 metres (68 feet) high, weighs about 180 tons and is inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs. Although the needles are genuine ancient Egyptian obelisks, they are somewhat misnamed. None has any connection with queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt. They were originally erected in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis on the orders of Thutmose III, around 1450 BC. The material of which they were wrought was brought from Aswan, near the first cataract of the Nile.
The inscriptions were added about 200 years later by Ramses II to commemorate his military victories.
The obelisks were moved to Alexandria and set up in the Caesarium, a temple built by Cleopatra in honor of Mark Antony, by the Romans in 12 BC, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, but were toppled some time later. This had the effect of burying their faces and so preserving most of the hieroglyphs from the effects of weathering.
The London needle is on the Victoria Embankment near the Golden Jubilee Bridges. It was presented to the United Kingdom in 1819 by Mehemet Ali, the Albanian-born viceroy of Egypt, in commemoration of the victories of Lord Nelson at the Battle of the Nile and Sir Ralph Abercromby at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801.
Although the British government welcomed the gesture, it declined to fund the expense of transporting it to London.
The obelisk remained in Alexandria until 1877 when Sir William James Erasmus Wilson, a distinguished anatomist and dermatologist, sponsored its transportation to London at a cost of some £10,000 (a very considerable sum in those days). It was dug out of the sand in which it had been buried for nearly 2,000 years and was encased in a great iron cylinder, 92 feet long and 15 feet in diameter, designed by the engineer John Dixon and dubbed Cleopatra. It had a vertical stem and stern, a rudder, two bilge keels, a mast for balancing sails, and a deck house.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre - The original Globe was an Elizabethan theatre that opened in fall 1599 in Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames, in an area now known as Bankside. It was one of several major theatres that were located in the area, the others being the Swan, the Rose and The Hope. The Globe was the principal playhouse of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, who would become the King's Men in 1603.
Most of Shakespeare's post-1599 plays were originally staged at the Globe, including Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear and Hamlet. The Globe was owned by a consortium of actors, who (except for one) were also shareholders in the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
Two of the six Globe shareholders, Richard Burbage and his brother Cuthbert Burbage, owned double shares of the whole, or 25% each; the other four men, Shakespeare, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, and Thomas Pope, owned a single share, or 12.5 %. (Originally William Kempe was intended to be the seventh partner, but he sold out his share to the four minority sharers, leaving them with more than the originally planned 10 %.) These initial proportions changed over time, as new sharers were added. Shakespeare's share diminished from 1/8 to 1/14, or roughly 7%, over the course of his career.
The Globe was built in 1599 using timber from an earlier theatre, The Theatre, that had been built by Richard Burbage's father, James Burbage, in Shoreditch in 1576.

The Burbages originally had a 20-year lease of the site on which the Theatre was built. When it ran out, they dismantled The Theatre beam by beam and transported it over the Thames to reconstruct it as The Globe.
On June 29, 1613, the Globe Theatre went up in flames during the first performance of Henry the Eighth. A theatrical cannon, set off during the performance, misfired, igniting the wooden beams and thatching. No one was hurt except, according to one of the few surviving documents of the event, for a man who "put out his breeches with a bottle of ale." Damage was repaired and the theatre remained open.
Like all the other theatres in London, the Globe was closed down by the Puritans in 1642. It was destroyed in 1644 to make room for tenements. Its exact location remained unknown until remnants of its foundations were discovered in 1989 beneath Anchor Terrace on Park Street. There may be further remains beneath Anchor Terrace, but the 18th century terrace is a Listed Building and may not be disturbed by archaeologists. At the instigation of Sam Wanamaker, a new Globe Theatre was built according to an Elizabethan plan. The structural design was carried out by Theo Crosby with the firm Pentagram as the architects. Although the reconstruction was carefully researched, the original plan was modified by the addition of sprinklers on the roof to protect against fire, and the theatre is partly joined onto a modern lobby and visitors centre.

The Golden Hind (or Golden Hinde) was an English galleon, captained by Sir Francis Drake, best known for its global circumnavigation between 1577 and 1580. She was originally known as the Pelican, and was renamed by Drake in mid-voyage in 1577, as he prepared to enter the Straits of Magellan, calling it the Golden Hind to compliment his patron, Sir Christopher Hatton, whose armorial crest was a golden hind (the heraldic term for a doe).
The Golden Hinde is a full-size reconstruction of the ship Sir Francis Drake sailed to be the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. The modern full size replica of the ship was built in Appledore, Devon and launched in 1973. It has travelled more than 140,000 miles (225 000 km), a distance equal to more than five times around the globe. Like the original, it circumnavigated the world.
Since 1996 it has been berthed at St Mary Overie's Dock, in Bankside, Southwark, London, between Southwark Cathedral and Clink Street. It hosts visits from schools in which children can dress up as Tudor sailors and receive living history lessons about Elizabethan naval history.

The OXO Tower is a building with a prominent tower on the south bank of the River Thames. The building currently has a set of arts and crafts shops on the ground and first floors, and a well-known restaurant on the 8th floor, at the top of the tower.

The original building was a power station, but in the 1920s it was acquired by the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, manufacturers of Oxo Beef Stock Cubes. The building was largely rebuilt to an Art Deco design by company architect Albert Moore.
Liebig wanted to include a tower featuring illuminated signs advertising the name of their product. When permission for the advertisements was refused due to regulations that prevented advertising along the banks of the Thames, the tower was built with four sets of three vertically-aligned windows, each of which "coincidentally" happened to be in the shapes of a circle, a cross and a circle.
In the late 1970s and into the 1980s there were several proposals to demolish the building and develop it and the adjacent Coin Street site, but these were met with strong local opposition and two planning inquiries were held. Although permission for redevelopment was granted, the support of the Greater London Council finally resulted in the tower and adjoining land being sold to the GLC in 1984 for £2.7 million. In a controversial move, the Greater London Council sold the entire 13 acre (53,000 m²) site to the not-for-profit Coin Street Community Builders for just £750,000.
In the 1990s the tower was refurbished to a design by Liftschutz Davidson to include housing, a restaurant, shops and exhibition space. In 1997 the Royal Fine Art Commission and BSkyB presented the OXO Tower with the Building of the Year Award for Urban Regeneration.

The Royal Festival Hall is the largest center for the arts in the world. Situated on London's South Bank it is easily accessible from Waterloo Station and is serviced by a comprehensive bus service.The Royal Festival Hall is part of the South Bank Centre, together with Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and The Hayward Gallery. There are free exhibitions and concerts in the Royal Festival Hall foyer, which is open every day except Christmas.
Artists from all over the world and from across the full range of styles and genres perform at the venue. Classical and contemporary music, dance, readings and talks are all on offer such that everyone will find something to suit their taste. The venue offers a wide range of food, drink and shops for visitors and tours of the facilities are offered daily.
The outside walls of the auditorium are covered with fossilized limestone and a fossilized starfish can be seen be the observant, at the stairwell on level one.
Visitors to level four will have a chance to see the baton collection from the world's greatest conductors, such as Sir Thomas Brevin and Edward Heath. The walls of the Royal Festival Hall have several feet of cavity in order to shield the outside area from any extraneous noise. Over 150,000 hours of music have been played at the Hall since it was first opened in 1951.

The London Aquarium was first opened in 1997 and provides visitors with an opportunity to view the 3000 various types of marine life on view. The massive tanks are home to huge Sharks, Rays and all manner of other fish. Visitors are only separated from the thousands of tons of water by 9mm thick acrylic windows.The 'sea-water' is actually London tap water that is treated and mixed with salts to make it habitable for the fish.
The water is mixed 8 tons at a time. The London Aquarium has more than fifty separate displays. The largest of which hold one million liters of water! The Aquarium is situated on the bank of the Thames, next to Westminster Bridge. The nearest underground station is Waterloo.
The London Aquarium is set across three floors and attempts to recreate many water environments. Alongside the vast Pacific Ocean display is a smaller Tropical Rainforest environment, Coral reefs, Indian Ocean and a freshwater stream have all been simulated.
The Aquarium presents daily talks about the exhibits and feeding times are a highlight of the day. An adopt-a-fish scheme is also available and proceeds go to help support the upkeep of the animals. The facilities are laid out in a very impressive arrangement and the feeling of being so close to the Sharks and Piranhas is fascinating- if a little frightening.

We also saw the TS Queen Mary. The famous Turbine Steamer was bought by Bass Leisure Retail in the 1980's and brought to London to become a floating pub/restaurant. She underwent a £2.5m refurbishment in 1997 and is currently moored at Victoria Embankment. Facilities include a bar, a nightclub, a function room and a larger conference room which can be used for parties or receptions. The top deck of the ship is used as an open air venue with bar facilities.
Soon, the boat pulled back into the docks and we departed.
I walked around for a while checking out Southbank Centre, a complex of arts buildings located on the South Bank of the River Thames between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge.
It comprises the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room, The Hayward and the Poetry Library, and is Europe's largest venue for the arts.
Nearby, but not part of Southbank Centre, are the National Theatre and National Film Theatre. This is one of the most popular public spaces in London, part of a very pedestrian-friendly stretch of the river extending eastwards from Westminster Bridge, past The London Eye, Southbank Centre, the Tate Modern and the new Shakespeare Globe Theatre to the east.

In all, Southbank Centre manages a 21 acre (85,000 m²) site from County Hall to Waterloo Bridge, including Jubilee Gardens and The Queen's Walk, attracting more than three million visitors annually. Nearly a thousand paid performances of music, dance and literature are staged at Southbank Centre each year, as well as over 300 free foyer events and an education program, in and around the performing arts venues. In addition, three to six major art exhibitions per year are presented at The Hayward, while National Touring Exhibitions reach over 100 venues across the UK.
As I walked along the banks of the River Thames, I was astounded by the cool light posts. Each depicted a large cast iron fish wrapped around a pole that was topped with a white globe. The detail in the fish was incredible.
Near the edge of the River Thames is the Battle of Britain Monument. The Battle of Britain Monument is a sculpture on the Victoria Embankment overlooking the River Thames which pays tribute to those who took part in the Battle of Britain during World War II. It was unveiled on September 18, 2005, the 65th anniversary of the Battle, by His Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall in the presence of many of the surviving airmen known collectively as "The Few", following the Royal Air Force Service of Thanksgiving and Rededication on Battle of Britain Sunday.

This service is an annual event, taking place annually since 1943; the first service took place in St Paul's Cathedral and since has taken place in Westminster Abbey.
The monument utilises a panelled granite structure 25 metres long which was originally designed as a smoke outlet for underground trains when they were powered by steam engines. A walkway was cut obliquely through the middle of the structure, and is lined with panels of high relief sculpture in bronze depicting scenes from the Battle of Britain. The centrepiece is an approximately life sized sculpture of airmen scrambling for battle. The outside of the monument is lined with bronze plaques listing all the airmen who took part in the Battle on the Allied side.
The sculptor of the monument is Paul Day and the architects are Donald Insall Associates. The statute was cast by Morris Singer Ltd, which is the oldest established fine art foundry in the world and has cast many prominent statues and sculptures in London and around the world, including the lions and fountains in Trafalgar Square.

After snapping off a few photos, it was time to get aboard another bus to check out the next leg of my London journey.
Our first stop on this portion was Buckingham Palace.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: BACK ABOARD THE BUS

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