June 3rd – London Walking
Continuing the journal of my recent visit to London, we find ourself on Saturday morning, June 3rd.
Saturday morning I woke up early to switch hotels. At this point I was footing the bill for my stay, so it was switch to the Best Western in Paddington. I picked the hotel for two reasons: it was cheap and had in room high-speed Internet. Having a high-speed connection in your room in England is somewhat rare unless you plan to stay at the $300+ a night hotel’s. And I figured with this being a Best Western it would have to live up to a minimum level of quality. While I wasn’t completely wrong, I also wasn’t right. I’ve read numerous times that hotel rooms in England are ridiculously small. The room at the Best Western was easily the smallest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in. Counting the bathroom and hallway, the size of the room I was given was significantly smaller than my bedroom at home. In fact, there was no chance of spreading your stuff out in the room. Once you were done with a bag, you had to pack it up and put it away or else you couldn’t get around. But hey, it had a free ‘net connection and I wasn’t planning on spending much time in my room, so it doesn’t really matter that much.
Saturday afternoon I headed over to the London Eye. It’s a massive ferris wheel located along the Thames river across and just down river from the Houses of Parliament. It contains a number of capsules that each hold about 30 people each and rise you to a level of 140 Meters in the air. It offers you absolutely spectacular views of all of London. The ride takes about half an hour total and is completely worth the price. The views are marvelous and the engineering of the London Eye is just spectacular. I’ve got pictures and will upload them later.
Once I was done with my ride I had to make my way over to the Tower Hill tube station across the sway from the Tower of London to meet up for the Jack The Ripper Walk put on by the original London Walks group. There are a couple of different groups that do Jack The Ripper walks, but I was told this was the best one to go on by a local. Unfortunately the world renowned expert on Jack The Ripper, Mr. Donald Rumbelow, wasn’t conducting the walk that Saturday, but a fine old English Gentleman named Graham took us on our walk. He was fantastic.
Before I get into the walk I need to mention that I left for this walk from the London Eye much earlier than I normally would have. See, the Distric and Circle Tube lines, which take you around Central London with ease, were both shut down for maintenance this weekend, which meant getting to the Tower Hill station was going to take more time than usual. I’d have to do a lot more walking since the Tower Hill Station was closed. And I have yet to master the bus system in London, so lots of walking. Very frustrating. It did allow me to see a bit more of London’s west end as I walked by the Tooley Street shops (beautiful little shopping center), past the Tate Moden Museum (another beautiful building), across the Tower Bridge and finally to my destination. I probably would have saved about 45 minutes had the appropriate tube lines been running. Bastards.
The walk itself was fantastic. See, pretty much every other block in London is steeped in history, but how would you know that if someone didn’t point it out to you? While the walk focused on the crimes and mysteries of Jack the Ripper, it was also a tour of east end London– the Tower Hamlets and Whitechappel. Simply fantastic. The walk took two hours and Graham, an old style raconteur, was just filled with information. He told us about and showed us the locations of the various Jack the Ripper murders, shared with us his own theories on who he though Jack actually was and generally entertained us with stories of old England. One of my favorites follows.
Apparently the last public execution in London was held towards the end of the 19th century. I believe it was at the Tower of London, but I could be wrong. Anyway, so this execution was a big deal and they built viewing stands for the public to use during the execution. The only problem was when filled by the spectators, the stands collapsed before the execution even took place. In total 14 people died that day, while only one was scheduled to die. Lethal punishment, indeed.
While on the walk we were shown a variety of neighborhoods in east London. Did you know that there’s a huge Bangladeshi community and an area affectionately known as “Baglatown?â€? I didn’t. The walk took us by the Ten Bells pub, also known as the Jack the Ripper pub. This is the pub that is at the center of the Jack the Ripper story, where many of the prostitutes peddled their goods. While on the walk we were also told about the Petticoate Lane Street Market and the Old Spitafields Market. Both were set to take place on Sunday and were just being set up. I decided I’d definitely make my way back there on Sunday to see what they were all about.
The tour of the east end concluded at the location of Mary Kelly’s murder. Graham regaled us with the grusome story of her death and then updated us all on where the various investigations into the true identity of Jack The Ripper were at. Basically, it’s still very much an unsolved murder and there are a good five or six candidates, some with ties to the royal family. It’s a mystery that will likely never be solved as some of the murders are considered copycats and there’s also a very real possibility that when Jack was done in London, he continued his killings in the United States. Crazy.
With the walk finished I went back to my tiny ass room at the Best Western Paddington. My feet were killing me. I probably walked for close to eight hours that day and the blisters on my feet are proof of that. I chilled out a bit, got a shower, then made my way down the street to a somewhat disappointing Spanish restaurant. Around 9:00 I headed back to the hotel, exhausted. I stopped through Hyde Park a bit, checked things out, but was way too tired to stay much past 9:30 (BTW, it was still a bit light out at that hour). I played on the ‘puter a bit and was in bed by 10:30 watching a documentary on the Beeb about Motown that was quite fantastic. I was asleep by 11:00 PM. I haven’t been to bed that early since I was a kid.
Tomorrow I’ll bring you the journal of my Sunday in London, which included the aforementioned markets, Camden and a visit to a friend.
