While my family was here, we went on two different walking tours of London. One of the city of Westminster and one of the city of London. Both of them together make up Greater London which is what everyone knows and loves.
Today, you are going to learn about some of the facts that my family and I learned.
Me and my family on the bus to Central!
Big Ben
We learned at Big Ben (the tall clock tower) that Big Ben actually refers to the first bell they had in the tower. The tower itself is actually named St. Stephen’s Clock Tower. The story goes, the bell got it’s name from the over seer of the building project because he just got rounder and rounder till he resembled the bell. The first bell cracked after the first time it was rung so they had to replace it but the name Big Ben stuck.
St. James’s Palace
St. James’s Palace used to be the main palace for a while built by Henry VIII 1536 and made into a royal residence in 1698. The royals moved out after a fire destroyed a huge chunk of it in 1809 and Queen Victoria finalized the move.
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace was originally built as the Earl of Buckingham’s house. The king at the time, George III saw it in a tour and said, “Hey, this place is really nice. I think I want it.” So he took it and gave it to his Queen. Later on, Queen Victoria moved in and made it the official royal residence it is today.
There have been two break ins to Buckingham Palace to date. One was by a German camper who saw the giant walls and spikes of the outer wall of Buckingham and thought that it looked like an inviting place to spend the night. Clearly he was sober. So he jumped the wall, pitched his tent and slept. The guards didn’t know till the next morning when he walked up to them and asked for directions on how to get out of the lovely park. :)
The second one was with an Irish guy who apparently had some mental issues. He broke a window in the Palace and climbed in. Since it was so dark, the guards couldn’t see any thing and assumed that there was no problems so they just shut down the whole security for the Palace. The guy ate dog food, drank some booze and then wandered upstairs to a bedroom to sleep in. Whose bedroom you might ask? The Queen’s! She talked to him calmly, as she’s been trained in this sort of stuff and kept pressing the silent alarm. Finally, the guy asked if she had any cigarettes. She said no but she could call her butler who could bring him some. He agreed so she called him and asked. The butler knew the queen didn’t smoke and when he asked her why she wanted them, she said, “For the Irish gentlemen who is sitting on my bed.” So they got the guards and brought him away.
London Eye
The London Eye has 32 pods and each pod represents one of the London boroughs. It was only supposed to be for the Millennium but it makes so much money every day, that they left it up.
My beautiful Nana and the London Eye.
London Bridge
The London Bridge is quite disappointing. Especially since it is right near the Tower Bridge which is so iconic that everyone loves it. They replaced the an older model of the London Bridge in the 1970’s and sold it to a man in Arizona. When it finally got there, the man was mad because they had forgotten the towers! Unfortunately, he had purchased the London Bridge, not the Tower Bridge. You can still see it today and according to our tour guide Giles, it’s the second most popular attraction in Arizona after the Grand Canyon.
Pictured above, the London Bridge.
Pictured below, not the London Bridge.
The London Bridge is also important because it helped decide what side of the road Londoners and hence, English people, drove on. Because of the knights needing to ride on the left side of the road to be able to access their swords, the mayor of London declared that this was the way traffic would go across the bridge. Eventually, it spread and became the custom. Cool, huh?
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