{"id":21369,"date":"2025-10-30T23:10:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T22:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=21369"},"modified":"2025-11-08T23:45:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T22:45:49","slug":"daily_3894_-_london_day_2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2025\/10\/30\/daily_3894_-_london_day_2\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily: 3894 – London, day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tower, the Eye, comic books and Halloween cake.<\/p>\n

I booked us rooms at a hotel very close to where I used to live, near Aldgate East. Far enough from the touristy sites to be reasonable in price, and an area I still feel roughly familiar with. There were similarly-priced places in West London, but I couldn’t judge whether the area would be reasonably safe and clean or not.<\/p>\n

In the morning we had tickets to the Tower of London. Most major sites require advance booking of timed tickets these days, and the Tower is no exception. The Tower was walking distance from the hotel, and it was surprisingly not raining at all. But first, a quick stop by the building where I used to live. It’s still there and looks more or less like before, except the building opposite our apartment gaining a few floors and blocking what used to be our view. Not that it matters anymore.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Then through St Katherine’s Docks to the Tower. Getting there early in the day was the right choice – there were no crowds at all. Wise from previous experience, I took us straight to the Crown Jewels, which I knew would gain massive queues later in the day.<\/p>\n

The crown jewels themselves are almost unreal. Royal crowns encrusted with hundreds of priceless jewels, giant diamonds. Orbs and sceptres and whatnot. Unfortunately but understandably there’s no photography allowed in there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We spent a couple of hours wandering around the Tower itself, visiting the various exhibitions, checking out old armour, reading about the menagerie that used to be housed here, etc etc.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If I was utterly filthy rich, I wouldn’t mind having a castle of my own, with plenty of picturesque passages and spiral staircases and wrought-iron details.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It was nearing lunchtime when we felt done with the Tower. On Adrian’s “to do” list for London was proper English fish and chips. Instead of a pub, we headed for Borough Market. It is – like most things – much more touristy than it used to be, but I still like the vibe. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to eat. Nothing sounded quite right, until I saw this risotto place, and immediately knew that that was what I wanted for lunch. It was delicious.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The fish was good but greasy, Adrian said. The mushy peas were the best part of the meal.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The ergonomics of eating on a bench were so-so.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Next up: comic books. We browsed comics in the basement of Gosh! Comics<\/a>…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

… and then browsed some more at Forbidden Planet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

By now it had been a couple of hours since lunch, and we needed an afternoon snack. I wanted a smoothie, Adrian wanted good cake. Both were willing to consider ice cream instead. We wandered around in the Neal Street and Covent Garden area, Googled, still couldn’t quite find anything that we really liked. Finally we ran across a cake shop that immediately pulled us in with amazing-looking Halloween-themed cakes in the window, called L’ETO<\/a>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And they had smoothies as well! Smoothies seem to have a strong healthy eating vibe in London – every single one had some fad food in them. This green one sounded the fruitiest, even though it had kale in it. Tasted less detox-y than it looked.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The cakes looked even more amazing up close. Adrian’s was called “Feel the beat” and was decorated with an anatomically correct heart (as far as I could judge). The inside (raspberry and pistachio) was good but not amazing – could have more flavour, he said. We’ve been spoiled by delicacies we get at Sp\u00e5nga Konditori.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

My “Poison Apple” had a shiny outside and a core of ginger spiced apple compote inside.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We topped off the day with a twilight ride on the London Eye. Eye-wateringly expensive, but not quite so bad that I would skip it<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

London at night looks pretty awesome.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tower, the Eye, comic books and Halloween cake. I booked us rooms at a hotel very close to where I used to live, near Aldgate East. Far enough from the touristy sites to be reasonable in price, and an area I still feel roughly familiar with. There were similarly-priced places in West London, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[633,18,745,768,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrian","category-dailies","category-food_and_cooking","category-photography-2","category-travels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21369"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21381,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21369\/revisions\/21381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}