London (Olympic Day 15)

Thank you all for reading this blog and for your patience while I catch up with the last few days of our trips. I'm in the middle of watching about 200 hours of NBC Olympic coverage and will post some closing comments once I've watched everything.

Here is my blog from the next to last day of the Olympics. Enjoy!

Today is a little easier than yesterday. We have a morning tour of the Tower of London and the semifinals of women's Basketball in the evening.

We have a quick breakfast and then it is off to the tour of London. The closest Underground station to the Tower of London is Tower Hill. This is ironic because this is where most of the prisoners held at the Tower of London were beheaded.

The next tour leaves at 9:30am so we look around. We are standing on a causeway between the Middle Tower and the Byword Tower. To either side of the causeway are nice flat, green lawns. This is where the moat used to be. A sign indicates that the Middle Tower was called that because it sat in the middle of the moat. This would make the moat 120m (393ft) wide. On top of that, they used to dump the castle sewage into the moat. That would deter all by the craziest invaders! In fact, the moat was blamed for a huge cholera epidemic and that was eventually the reason is was drained and filled. Sean is happy because there is a full-size model of a trebuchet on the lawn where the moat used to be:

Our tour guide, Sean, is a Yeoman Warder, also known as a beefeater:





We find out later that in order to qualify to be a Yeoman Warder, you have to have completed 22 years of military service and have been promoted at least to the rank of senior noncommissioned officer (Master Sargent in the US) and have received both the long service and good conduct medals. Our guide is a square sort of fellow with a booming voice. I can easily picture him chewing out some poor private (or whatever they call them in Britain). In fact, the only time we have difficulty hearing him is when a helicopter decides to hover over the Tower bridge for several minutes. He turns out to be a funny guy. After spending 5-10 minutes describing some of the many prisoners who were beheaded on Tower hill, he says "and now we will be heading off in this direction"!

Sean tells us that the White Tower that gives the Tower of London it's name was constructed by William the Conquerer shortly after his Norman army defeated the Saxons in 1066AD to take control of England. The purpose was to protect London from attack along the river. The Tower was gradually expanded over the next 200-300 years. Here is a view from the inner courtyard:

The Tower had a lot of uses. It was the Royal residence until the early 1600's. It housed prisoners and ammunition as well as the royal menagerie, the precursor to the London Zoo.

One of the first stops is the Bloody Tower. It got it's name from the murder of the two young sons of Henry IV. The royal princes disappeared in the late summer of 1483, but it was nearly 200 years before their skeletons were discovered by a workman during construction. Upstairs in the tower, there is a display that discusses the likely perpetrators of this terrible deed. There is a display that lets you vote for who you think actually did it. The leader in the clubhouse is the young boy's uncle, Richard Duke of Gloucester who became heir to the throne as a result of their disappearance and was eventually crowned Rickard III. Sean votes for Richard 8 times!

In the inner courtyard, we come upon one of the famous ravens that live in the Tower:

The ravens live here because one of the Kings is said to have proclaimed that the Kingdom would fall should the ravens leave the tower. As a result, there is a Yeoman Warder with the title Master of Ravens who takes care of the eight ravens who live there. They tell us that on occasion, some of the ravens have been kicked out; one because he liked to chew on TV antennas. As I am taking a picture of a raven, the guy who runs the information booth inside the tower walks over and hands me a button to add to my vest. It says Apprentice Knight on it.

We find that seven people, including Henry VIII's wife Anne Boleyn were beheaded in the Tower instead of on Tower Hill. They are buried in unmarked graves in the small chapel inside the Tower where our tour concludes.

Our last stop inside the Tower is to see the Crown Jewels. There were a number of crowns and scepters with jewels the size of small eggs, but the item that I liked best is the Jeweled Sword of Offering. This is the only sword that is actually presented to the monarch during their Coronation. The hilt and scabbard are covered from one end to the other with diamonds, rubies and sapphires and the blade has the intricate patterns typical of Damascus steel.

After leaving the Tower, we decide to walk across the Tower bridge and back along the south bank of the river to find something for lunch.  We pass the HMS Belfast. The Belfast was a Royal Navy light cruiser that saw action during the Normandy invasion among other places during WWII and was converted into a floating museum in 1967. Here is a picture of Tower bridge on this beautiful day in London:

We decide to eat lunch at a Pub. This one is not a family Pub so we have to eat outside and Beth has to escort Sean through the bar when he needs to visit the toilet. I decide to go with the traditional Fish and Chips along with a Ginger beer from Scotland. Beth and Sean have different types of meat pies. The food is great except for the mushy peas that traditionally come with the Fish and Chips. I am not wild about peas under the best of circumstances, but boil them until dead and then mush them almost to the consistency of baby food and you have a culinary nightmare.

We walk home for a little down time. I take a nap (tired from all of the walking) and then work on the blog while Sean and Beth watch the women's Mountain Biking on the BBC network.

The semifinals match of Women's Basketball featuring Australia and Russia takes place at the North Greenwich arena, a venue we have not been to before. The outside looks like some sort of sea anemone:

Sean sees food and is instantly hungry again. While I am waiting for him, a couple Russian guys walk up and ask if I would like to trade. They are interested in my NOC pins and we complete two trades - dated Russia and Switzerland pins for generic Monaco and generic Zambia pins. I'm not sure whether London will figure it out, but all of the Russians that we've seen are into pin trading.

Most of the fans at the North Greenwich arena are rooting for Australia. This is going to be a battle of two different styles. The Australians are bigger. They will try to slow the ball down and dominate rebounding. The Russians are quicker and will try to get out and run and shoot before the Aussies can set up their defense. Both teams have at least one player who plays in the WNBA, the number one women's basketball league in the world; Lauren Jackson and Elizabeth Cambage for Australia and Becky Hammon for Russia. I talked about Becky in my Beijing journal as she had just gotten Russian citizenship just before the Beijing Olympics. Her decision was based on not initially being invited to the US pre-Olympic camp, the fact that she had been playing in the WNBA offseason in Russian and because the Russians were desperate for a quality point guard. The Russians have obviously not been able to develop another point guard in the past four years because Becky is still starting for the Russian team this time:

Jackson at 196cm (6'5") and Cambage at 203cm (6'8") tower above the Russian players. While Cambadge is pretty slow, Jackson is probably one of the top 5 players in the world.

From the beginning, the Russians have a lot of trouble with the taller Australians as two of their starting players quickly pick up three fouls and end up sitting out for most of the first half. By the middle of the second half, the Australians were ahead by 15 or more. About that time, the Russian coach called Hammon over. Shortly after that, Hammon started scoring at will. Apparently, the coach told Hammon to forget about passing and just shoot. The Russians got to within 5 points, but could get no closer and Australia held on to win the bronze medal 83-74. Here are some pictures from the game:



I am pretty tired after the long day yesterday so am happy to just go back to the hotel and watch the Olympics on TV. It is really difficult for people at the Olympics to know what is happening at other venues. I have not mentioned the daily programs available at all venues. These are really high quality magazines that are produced overnight. In them you get the key results from the previous day and what is going on today. These programs and the BBC evening TV coverage are the only reason that we know anything about what is going on. Of course, the BBC is only covering Team GB oriented sports so we don't find out until we came home that the US women's basketball team won the gold medal a few hours after the game that we attended.

Steps for the day: 15,950