London Haunts

After leaving the Tower of London Tuesday morning, we took a stroll across the famous Tower Bridge. There are many bridges across the Thames, so just to clarify, I'm talking about this bridge:


If you thought this was London Bridge, your confusion is understandable. Actually, there have been multiple London Bridges over time, though none as visually striking as this one. (The one prior to the current one was actually sold in 1968 to an American who moved it to Arizona and, if you believe some reports, actually thought he was buying the Tower Bridge.)

Anyway, we walked across the Tower Bridge, declining a stop at the "Tower Bridge Exhibition" partway across. It seemed like it might be a chance to yet again "go somewhere high and look down on London," which, though maybe cool, we'd done twice already.

We stopped for fish and chips at a pub, the second time we'd done so on the trip. This was the first time that we really noticed that cider is relatively popular in England -- compared to Denver, anyway. It seemed as though each pub you'd go to had a half dozen readily available, and not typically all the same ones.

We then decided to check out something called The London Bridge Experience. It wasn't a total dud, but knowing what I know now, we wouldn't have done it. I mentioned a few posts back that our visit to St. Paul's Cathedral had left us wanting to see something more "crypt-like."

Before the trip, we'd decided to buy a London Pass, a tourist travel card that paid your admissions to several dozen different attractions around the city. See enough different things included on the Pass, and you save money over the cost of each of those things separately. Thumbing through the guidebook that accompanied the pass, we found this thing called The London Bridge Experience, which alluded to more ghastly chapters in London history, and mentioned "crypts" specifically.

We should have read more carefully between the lines, because when we arrived at the site, it became clear what the place really was -- a year-round haunted house. But we were already there, and our admissions were "free" (part of the already-paid-for Pass), so we decided to give it a shot.

It wasn't a terrible haunted house, but I would have been disappointed to pay for it, and I think I was disappointed at the loss of time that might better have been spent on a more uniquely London experience. (I can go to a haunted house here in Denver. I can't, for example, tour Royal Albert Hall.) But there was a bit of novelty in the fact that they sent groups together through the haunted house eight at a time, a hand on another's shoulder in a human chain... and in the fact that I somehow ended up being the leader of my group.

In short, nothing from this particular afternoon would make my list of essential things no London vacationer should overlook. But there was a wonderful experience that more than made up for it to come later that evening...