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Herlock’s London Adventure 2018


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20 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

I recall reading that the original expressions were "up sh*t creek" and "on the water wagon," which pretty well eliminates the tour guide's explanations.  I'm gonna guess they were just making jokes to entertain y'all.  ;)

Maybe Carol but these are Blue Badge tour guides and I’ve always found them pretty good. A lot of these derivations are disputed but I have to admit that looking into it I can see that the two explainations that you mentioned are likely to be the true ones👍

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The only cathedral in the country that doesn’t take the name of its city.

Also, a fact that blew us all away - the dome weighs 64,000 tonnes. The Titanic weighed 59,000 tonnes. I just stood underneath it and at the tombs of Nelson, Wellington, Wren and the painter Turner. I was actually standing on Turner without knowing it.

https://ibb.co/nOzuo0

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4 hours ago, HerlockSholmes said:

The only cathedral in the country that doesn’t take the name of its city.

Lemme take a wild guess -- St. Paul's?

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4 hours ago, HerlockSholmes said:

The only cathedral in the country that doesn’t take the name of its city.

Also, a fact that blew us all away - the dome weighs 64,000 tonnes. The Titanic weighed 59,000 tonnes. I just stood underneath it and at the tombs of Nelson, Wellington, Wren and the painter Turner. I was actually standing on Turner without knowing it.

https://ibb.co/nOzuo0

As part of a series of trips I made related to the Peninsular Wars I visited many tombs. The first stop was St. Paul's to visit Nelson and Wellington. They're rather modest considering the stature they enjoyed in people's minds. Napoleon's, on the other hand, is way out proportion at Les Invalides in Paris. It's a monstrous affair containing only a handful of ashes. It was still worth the visit though.

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3 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Lemme take a wild guess -- St. Paul's?

Give that woman a cigar👍

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2 hours ago, Sheerluck said:

As part of a series of trips I made related to the Peninsular Wars I visited many tombs. The first stop was St. Paul's to visit Nelson and Wellington. They're rather modest considering the stature they enjoyed in people's minds. Napoleon's, on the other hand, is way out proportion at Les Invalides in Paris. It's a monstrous affair containing only a handful of ashes. It was still worth the visit though.

I recall reading a biography of Wellington a few years ago and being amazed to find that there’s actually a photograph of him.

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https://ibb.co/jcm0vf

To photographs of an amazing house that was built for William Waldorf Astor (all Americans are very rich as we know😃) which cost three times the amount that was spent building The Royal Albert Hall. I’ve never been inside but it’s apparently breathtaking (and a little crazy.) The guide said that it’s been called a mixture of the baroque and Disney.

 

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This is Middle Temple. It’s one of the 4 Inns Of Court where solicitors and barristers train. Boris Johnson trained to be an idiot here.🙂

The first ever production of Twelfth Night took place in that building. Elizabeth I attended as did some bloke called Shakespeare.

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This fountain is next to Middle Temple and wasmentioned In Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewitt

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This is Middle Temple. Most of the Church is newer as it was bombed during the war but the part in the photograph is 12th Century.

I think it was the first place visited by Tom Hanks in the Da Vinci Code. It was a Templar church by the way.

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This is St Dunstan’s church. It’s a statue of Elizabeth I done in 1588 while she was still alive.

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I went on a British Museum tour today very near to where Holmes lived before he moved to Baker Street.

https://ibb.co/dyHcvf

This is The Rosetta Stone.

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Well this was a surprise and the best part of the day for me. After the museum we went for a pint but it wasn’t until we came outside again that I realised which pub this was. It’s one I’ve always wanted to find. It’s called The Market Tavern and it’s believed by most experts to be the inspiration behind The Alpha public house in the Holmes short story The Blue Carbuncle. I wanted to go back inside to ask about the Goose Club but the staff wouldn’t have had a clue☹️

https://ibb.co/drubML

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1 hour ago, HerlockSholmes said:

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Part of the Elgin Marbles which we permanently borrowed from Greece.

Is 'permanently borrowed' synonymous with 'stole'?  :)

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5 hours ago, HerlockSholmes said:

https://ibb.co/dyHcvf

This is The Rosetta Stone.

That's the main reason I went to the British Museum.  Pretty cool.  But they sure don't make it easy to get a good photo, do they?

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13 hours ago, Sheerluck said:

You were very near the room of the bust of Alexander the Great. Did you take that in?

No we didn’t. As you know the museum is massive ( I think that it’s something like the third largest in the world behind The Louvre and The Metropolitan?) If I can get to London next year I might visit the museum but not as part of a tour which is restricted to 2 hours or so.

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