...And Then, the Tower Guard Laughed

For my touring team’s week in London, we needed accommodation, but nothing too spectacular, since we were planning on sleeping on the sidewalks (as I have written about in my Wimbledon journal) for the majority of the week anyway. We really just needed a dumping ground for our massive amounts of luggage and a place we could shower in the morning, plus a reasonable bed for the two nights we spent there. Therefore, we stayed in the closest “hostel” to Wimbledon—the Wimbledon YMCA. I put hostel in quotes because I am not sure if this was actually a hostel or not, since it seemed to be a community centre where people with nowhere else to live went.

The rooms here were incredibly tiny—we had two twin size beds in ours, which were facing each other and against the right hand wall. On the left hand side, there was a tiny walkway, just the right size for one duffel tennis bag to fit in. Since this was the only place to put our luggage, we had no walking room at all and had to move about the room by walking across the beds. There was a small sink/counter area in the centre of the left hand side, which ended up only being accessible by jumping across tennis bags into a small space we had cleared out. I really would have been happy with another couple inches or so of walkway—just enough that I could actually walk into and out of the room!

The bathrooms were cleaned every day and thus always seemed reasonably clean when I used them. And a plus on the toilets in the queue outside Wimbledon—they actually had toilet paper restocked every day, rather than running out halfway through the week never to be refilled! There were also facilities to do laundry in, although this consisted of only a few washers and dryers. We had to do all our laundry on Friday night and there definitely wasn’t enough space for all of us—I ended up taking some very wet clothes up to Edinburgh.

The worst thing about this hostel was the other people staying there. As I said before, it seemed to be a community centre of sorts. I didn’t see any other travelers—there could have been, but I didn’t spend a huge amount of time in the hostel. The thing that scared us was being in our rooms at night and having someone, who was very high on any number of drugs, banging on our doors, alternately yelling about wanting to get in or wanting more drugs. Needless to say, we stayed locked in our rooms after that incident.

I don’t know how much the YMCA cost because it was all covered in our touring team fees, but it can’t have been a huge amount. The hostel is close to the tube station, which will take you to Wimbledon, the tournament. It’s a good location, but otherwise I wouldn’t particularly recommend the place.

On our one-day tour of London, we were given the choice of either visiting Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London. Having visited both before, I wasn’t sure which one to go to, but I ended up choosing the Tower since I had visited the Abbey much more recently. Most of our group chose Westminster, but there were 5 or 6 of us that headed into the Tube station and caught the Circle Line to Tower Hill.

Nothing in London is cheap, but a basic ticket into the Tower was only about £11 (this was 2002, meaning the prices have probably gone up). Of course, the first attraction as we walked in was the guard standing outside the Crown Jewels. Nobody else had seen these up close so we all took turns taking pictures and trying to make him laugh. Of course, no one was very successful in this, so we moved on to the Crown Jewels.

The Jewels are definitely an interesting part of the Tower. They can either leave you in awe or make you sick at how much money the British royal family has spent on massive diamonds to put in a crown that is worn once every fifty years. You can’t describe them as anything but spectacular, though, and they are worth seeing. A certain number of people are let in at intervals here, and then you pretty much spent the entire time on walkalators that scoot you past all the Jewels without you having a chance of hatching a plan on how to steal them. As I’ve said, they are spectacular, but after a while they tend to run together.

This seemed to happen much sooner for the boys in our group, who decided it was time to take pictures in a decidedly non-picture area. One of them, Shane, managed to get some decent video footage from his video camera underneath his arm before being called out by one of the many security people standing just behind the walkalators. Another one decided he wanted actual pictures, and managed to get a good half-dozen before turning his camera off. Unfortunately, he saw another crown he liked the look of and turned his camera back on and stuck it in front of his chest like he had been doing before. Unfortunately, when he pressed the button, a huge flash lit up the room (apparently, you have to turn off flash every time the camera turns on) and he was immediately singled out and yelled at.

This entry is continued in The Tower of London: The Guard Laughs.

This entry is a continuation of The Tower of London: The Crown Jewels.

After causing enough trouble in the Jewels, we wandered around the outside of the Tower’s keep. We poked our heads in a few doors, but no one was very motivated to go inside and look at much. Soon, we found ourselves back in front of the Crown Jewels guard, who was busying himself staring into space and playing with his gun every once in awhile. Shane stood in front of him, imitating the guard, and we soon turned to trying to make Shane laugh instead, since it was slightly easier. Then, Chuy, the guy who had been taking pictures in the Jewels, had a question for the guard (it’s a bit vulgar, so if you don’t want to read it, skip the rest of this paragraph). He walked up to the guard and asked, "So, if a hot girl walks by, and you get a boner, does that count as moving?"

The guard actually laughed! He definitely stopped himself immediately, but he laughed and cracked a smile as he was trying to stop himself. We were all totally amazed—I had talked to plenty of guards, and even had my brother as a baby poke one, and never had they budged or done anything but look into the distance. We all couldn’t stop laughing because of it, although we were sad that Shane had turned off his video camera 5 minutes previously!

As we were standing around the guard laughing, a man walked up to us. He said, unfortunately in an American accent (showing the world just how intelligent Americans could be), "I don’t think that there guard is real. He has to be a statue from Madame Tussaud’s!"

"But, how does he move?" one of us asked him.

"Of course, he’s got batteries in him! Now, who wants a picture with the nice guard?" he asked.

"We have pictures already, thanks."

"No, I mean a picture with your arm around the guard!" he said as he started putting one leg over the 3-foot tall metal bar separating us from the guard.

This entry is continued in The Tower of London: Getting Thrown Out.

This entry is a continuation of my Tower of London: The Guard Laughs entry.

The guard reacted the instant the man’s foot hit the ground—he pulled his gun off his shoulder and started charging with his bayonet! The man nearly wet himself and ran off into the distance. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had jumped into the Thames! As soon as the man was gone, the guard shouldered his gun and was back to normal.

Of course, all of this gave us even more reason to laugh. What an idiot! Unfortunately for us, we were the only ones at the scene when one of the tower Beefeaters arrived. The Beefeaters are essentially just tour guides and various forms of security around the place, and are the guys dressed in navy outfits and hats. I personally prefer their more traditional red and yellow outfits, but I don’t think this Beefeater would have appreciated me telling him that at this point in time.

He was not a happy man. As he walked quickly towards us, he began yelling. "The Tower Guards are here for security purposes, not entertainment! This is a very serious matter!" he yelled at us.

"I’m sorry, but we didn’t do anything. The man that tried to stand next to the guard ran away." I said.

"I’ve seen you standing here all day harassing this guard," he said, and wouldn’t hear any more of any of our arguments. Before we knew it, a few more Beefeaters had arrived and we were being escorted out of the Tower. Needless to say, our coach was not very happy with us, especially since we were all wearing our "John Newcombe Tennis Ranch" jackets. All I seemed to do the entire day was stand back and laugh, and I got thrown out of the Tower for it! But, I think it was all worth it to see the Tower guard laugh for the first, and very likely only, time in my life.

In 2002, I made the John Newcombe Tennis Ranch Touring Team. This meant that, along with 9 other girls, 8 guys, and two coaches, I was part of a 3-week trip around England to watch Wimbledon and play tournaments. We didn’t play any tennis in the first week—rather, we watched Wimbledon for 4 days (as described in my Wimbledon journal) and toured around London for one. I had already seen everything on the itinerary in my many previous visits to London with my family, so I wanted to stay at Wimbledon with a couple others, but no such luck.

Our day began with getting off the Underground entirely too early. This meant that we had to sprint the distance between 3 Underground stations just to make it to the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace on time. I decided after passing the second of three Tube stations, having seen the Changing before, that I would walk because I couldn’t catch my breath. This meant that I made it about 5 minutes later than the rest of the group but still ended up in the back of the crowd with them.

Seeing the guards walking around, performing their age-old routine, was interesting, especially with Buckingham Palace as the backdrop rather than Windsor Castle, where I had seen it previously. However, most of the group lost interest rather quickly and ended up arguing with one of those guys that walks around spouting Christianity. This guy believed that he was the perfect man (to which I replied "Why don’t you have a better job then?") and was very, well, adamant in his beliefs. He ended up making a couple of the girls in our group cry, which made us miss the end of the ceremony entirely—not that most of the shorter people could see anything over the crowd anyway.

From there, we hopped onto one of the Hop-on Hop-off buses that go around London—I believe it was The Big Bus Company. I felt a bit guilty for advising my coach that this was one of the better ways to see London when we found out that there had been a large bank robbery which had closed down the central square mile that is London. I mainly felt bad because we had already paid for our tickets, which aren’t cheap, when we ended up stuck on the roundabout at Marble Arch. All traffic was stopped, and didn’t look like it was going to get better any time soon, so we hopped off the next chance we could.

For lunch, we picked the most British restaurant we could find—ahem, I mean, we ate at the Hard Rock Café. This Hard Rock did have something to distinguish it from all other Hard Rocks though—it was the original Café, opened in 1971. Most of us ended up with T-shirts stating this fact. The food at the Hard Rock wasn’t anything special, and surprisingly, tasted just like food at any other Hard Rock Café. Unfortunately, the prices were just as inflated as all the other Hard Rocks as well—luckily, the coach was paying! For my main meal, I had a bacon burger that was quite good but probably not worth its price. However, our appetizer was great and worth every penny—southwestern nachos, covered in meat, sour cream, cheese, and numerous other toppings that fall under the "southwest" label. These cost about £8 and disappeared off the table in a minute flat.

In the afternoon, we had a choice of visiting Westminster Abbey or The Tower of London. I chose the Tower, and am very glad I did so, even if it resulted in getting a very stern talking-to. I’ve chronicled these events in my three Tower of London entries. After we left (were removed) from the Tower, the Westminster Abbey part of the group met up with us and we took a ferry down the Thames. We were lucky enough to see the Tower Bridge actually go up—something I was told a long time ago only happens six times a year. A tour guide in the Tower of London told us this, and I am certain he was pulling our legs, since I’ve seen it happen twice now. Still, it’s not something you see every day, and we happened to be just down the river when it happened! We also floated past the new Globe theatre—obviously not the original one from Shakespearean times, since that one burned down. We also saw St. Paul’s Cathedral—possibly the only landmark in London I have totally missed—and the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben before we got off.

We managed to squeeze a fair amount into our day in London, even if everything didn’t go according to plan. And while I was bitter at first about missing out on the tennis, I’m very happy I went on the tour. London really is a city I can never get sick of seeing, and it was great to see it in the different light that traveling with your friends, rather than family, gives you.