This next day was how I always imagined London to be.  It was rainy and grey as we made our way to the Tower Bridge.  We entered through a small side door to begin our morning tour.  King Edward II opened the majestic bridge in 1894.  It contains two massive towers linked together over the River Thames and the middle part of the bridge can be lifted to allow for the passing of huge ships.  The massive bridge stands at over 196 feet tall and 869 feet long.  It took 11,000 tons of steel to build the now famous framework.  The public is allowed to purchase tickets to tour it from the top to the bottom.  Burk and I found the exhibits interesting and informative as we crossed over the river from the inside of the bridge.  As we worked our way down to the bottom, I found the Victorian Engine Rooms to be particularly fascinating.  Huge steam engines and furnaces were once used to power the raising of the Tower Bridge’s “bascules” — the moveable roadways at the bridge’s center.  It was like stepping back in time to the early years of the Industrial Revolution.  After we left we caught a boat tour down the Thames, as rivulets of raindrops slid their way down the sides of the glassed in dome.  It occurred to me that Paris was like a beautiful woman and London like a rough man; for me there is no comparison between the exquisite delicacy of the Seine and the industrial barges of the Thames.  On our tour we saw The Shard, a 95 story skyscraper that is the tallest in the United Kingdom.  We disembarked at the London Eye, Europe’s tallest Ferris wheel.  There was a three hour wait, thanks to a group full of giggling teenagers on spring break, so we elected to skip it.  To my great delight we discovered an old carousel nearby.  They gave plastic “golden tickets” as admission and it was truly a treasure.  After that we crossed back over the Thames on the Millennium Bridge, a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians.  It was disconcerting, though, as the whole thing dipped and swayed as we crossed.  Londoners have nicknamed it the “Wobbly Bridge” because of the unexpected motion.  Our family called and asked what we were doing.  As fate would have it, we were within walking distance of their stunning hotel, which has been called London’s most famous, and they invited us to tea!  Everything was so elegant and the marble floors gleamed.  I was so proud my baby was a doll at her first proper high tea and we had a lovely time.  Afterward we went shopping in Piccadilly Circus, another place I had always read about.  It turned out to be a round open space that had different vendors and it was fun wandering in and out of the different stalls to see what they were selling.  The Academy Award-winning American actress Mary Steenburgen summed up my feelings exactly with this quote:

“My family didn’t have money to travel, so reading was how I knew about the world.  It made me hungry to have more experiences than just what I could possibly experience in Arkansas.”

This trip to London was allowing me to experience all of the things this Texan had read about for so long:  tea time, the Tower, and the London bridges.