Still driven by our need to get our money's worth on the London Pass we set out pretty early this morning to try and get in a decent amount of sightseeing before Shabbos came in. Our first stop of the day was at The Tower of London (covered by the London Pass). It's a stronghold on the Thames first established by William the Conquerer almost 1000 years ago and it has a particularly bloody history as it's known for the torture and execution of it's prisoners. Interestingly, it's also home to the Crown Jewels of England. We took the audio guide here which was a really good way of getting an organised tour around the place without being surrounding by a crowd of tourists (a term I'm still getting used to applying to myself). We have posted pictures of two of the cool torture devices there as well as one of a a bovine smile placement. Seeing the Crown Jewels was also definitely worth it. The Great Star of Africa in the Royal Sceptre is about the size of a small fist. Nice.

We wrapped up the Tower of London and ran over to the Globe Theater for the last tour of the day. We basically sat down in the theater while we were lectured about it's history. Not as bad as it sounds. After it was done we got to see the actors for The Merchant of Venice blow off some steam by doing a little jig. We've posted a clip. We also got standing room tickets for The Merchant of Venice for tomorrow afternoon which should definitely liven up our Shabbos.

To get to the other side of the Thames we decided to take nearby London Bridge which we've all heard a lot about. We were pretty disappointed when we found out that it was a lame, totally plain concrete bridge. Nothing special about it at all. Apparently the original London Bridge burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. We were not amused.

When we reached Tower Bridge, we kind of realized that that was the bridge that we had thought was London Bridge. The Bridge's architecture makes it look almost like a castle and it's really beautiful as far as bridges go. There was a tour with the London Pass that allowed us to go to the top of the towers and to the engine room where the bridge raising is controlled from. After the engine room there is a case with a model of Tower Bridge. To make a Godzilla-esque pose for a picture I put my England guide book on top of the case. Unfortunately I dropped it right over a hole through which the book fell creating the scene in the picture. Luckily, the only damage done was a tilting of one of the flags and an embarrassing encounter with a security guard.

 We hadn't quite broken even on the London Pass yet and with just a couple of hours to go, we decided to go to the London Zoo.  We barely made it on time but were able to make it to a couple of enclosures.  It was pretty pitiful.  The most upsetting part was the penguin enclosure.  Apparently, the London Sanatorium for Animals thinks that all happy penguins need is a pool of water.  They just kind of waddled about depressed.  There was a large huddle of them in a corner plotting their escape.  Can't really blame them.

We got home about half an hour ago and Josh is getting ready to go to synagogue with the dual mission of getting us a place to eat tonight. London has been really inhospitable to the whole Kosher eating thing and not having peanut butter sandwiches for Shabbos dinner would be great. And now that the shower is free I should really get to it.