The Globe Theater

Continuing down The Queen’s Walk I went to the London Bridge Experience. Here’s how London Pass describes it:

“The London Bridge Experience is a unique and interactive journey through the deep, dark history of London. Travel through time and take a light-hearted look at 2000 years’ worth of history within London Bridge and the surrounding area. Watch Boudicca fight her battles against the Romans, get twisted up in the fates of traitors and their treachery but beware to keep your head! Be engulfed in the powerful Great London Fire and follow the gruesome and gory tales of Jack the Ripper. Finally, for those who dare, enter the bowels of the Bridge and be terrified, tormented and tricked within The Tombs.” And at £26.95 is one of the most expensive attractions. You can’t take pictures because, since it is billed as London’s scariest event, surprise is of essence.  I can tell you that the actors were good although when the first one, describing the 1830 version London Bridge (the bridge has been burned and torn down many times over time) was sold and rebuilt in 1967 in Arizona USA, mentioned the buyer thought he was getting Tower Bridge, he finished with “Americans are stupid!”.  Had he been referring to our last election, I might have agreed with him but since he was not, I was put off. I said something a few moments later that he acknowledged as a zinger. Anyway very, very dark with sounds of death and destruction, flashing lights, dismembered bodies, people in costume coming to life and hanging heads it was OK (the moving walkway with rotating circular walls of lights was incredibly disorientating) but seriously over priced. This would be a skip.

From there you go past the Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind,

to the reproduction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater.  The Globe tour guide was the best tour guide I ever had heard. I made a point of shaking his hand at the end and letting him know. The American actor Sam Wanamaker began raising funds to exactly rebuild the theater which had been destroyed by Puritans in the 1600’s.  Sam died a couple of years before it was opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1997.  There was a matinee of Romeo & Juliet that afternoon but it was sold out.