Voulez vous danger

Since I've returned to Australia, I'll be doing post-trip blogging (in addition to anything else I might post about), with little grabs from various things I discovered while living in the UK, or on my journey home.

Today's post is a few thoughts as a result of my tour through the Tower of London. Though firstly, I'm going to go outside of the grounds to comment on The Tower Bridge. Or rather, more to voice my disappointment that "London Bridge" as I'd get the image of it in my head from my childhood is actually Tower Bridge, not London Bridge. When I actually saw London Bridge, I must confess I wasn't so sure why it falling down was such a tragedy. I certainly wouldn't have been crying out to any fair ladies over it.

The Tower of London itself is an interesting place, and although it was "never officially a prison", it certainly had its fair share of death. Including polar bears. No, I'm not joking, as at one point, the moat of the castle was effectively a sewer, and a couple of polar bears (given as gifts) got sick as a result of swimming in it and died. If that's not a trivial pursuit question, it should be.

I could comment about the standard things like beheadings and the crown jewels and so on, but that would be boring. However, I'd heard you got to look at the crown jewels for only a few seconds, but I went in the middle of the week and could look at them for as long as I wanted. I can't deny that a massive diamond is impressive, but I confess that I was most jealous of the phenomenal gold punch bowl with some of the most ornate carving I've seen. An American girl obvious agreed, as she took a photo of the thing before the guards came over and quickly forced her to delete it under threat of massive fines. How she could have possibly missed the multitude of "no camera" signs, I'll never know.

But the note I'll leave on is a little exhibit on torture. There was a small display asking people "Is torture acceptable?" There were three options and counters to keep track of the number of times each had been pushed. The figures were interesting:

• No: ~ 280,000
• Yes, as punishment: ~270,000
• Yes, to find information to prevent other crimes: ~170,000

That's food for thought.