Day Five, Ben Gets Tortured

We started out the morning at the London Dungeon. There was a long line waiting out front, but we already had our tickets, so we didn't have such a long wait. Inside, it was dark and very hard to see where we were going. We saw displays about the Great Fire of London, Jack the Ripper, primitive surgery, and the plague, among other things.

Ben was chosen to be the victim in a demonstration of torture devices by a beautiful ghoulish woman. First, she showed how pincers would be heated and then applied to the tongue. After giving the tongue a few good twists, it would be yanked out. So that the victim wouldn't drown in his own blood, the tongue was then fed back to him (although how he could eat it without a tongue wasn't explained). Then, a large hook was waved around. It could be used in many places, including both the head and the backside. Finally, she brought out a device that would have been used to cut off Ben's "dangly bits." Before she did that, though, she had to get a smaller version of the instrument.

At the end of the displays, we were guided into the "drop", which gave us the experience of being hanged. We dropped suddenly, as if the trap door had been sprung, but we thankfully weren't stopped by a rope around our necks!

Next, we headed over to My Old Dutch Pancake House for lunch. Ben had a "Hot Dutch" pancake with pepperoni, chorizo, cheese, red chillies & tomato sauce. We will definitely have to go back and try the sweet pancakes next time.

After that, we headed off for a London Walks tour of the British Museum. Since there is so much to see there, we wanted to get a quick overview of the highlights. The museum was very crowded and it was hard to see some of the exhibits. We were able to see the mummies of the Egyptian display and the Elgin Marbles in the Greek display. There was also a fascinating area displaying archaeological finds from Britain. The most interesting was the complete ship that was found buried with many artifacts enclosed.

Then, we had to hurry off to White City to the BBC Studios where we had tickets to be in the audience of a new game show being filmed. The show was called "As Seen On TV" and this was the first episode. There were 300 people in the audience. The show consisted of a host and two teams of three celebrities who answered questions about television shows. I only recognized two of the celebrities: Michelle Collins ("Cindy Beale" from "Eastenders") and Debra Stephenson ("Shell" from "Bad Girls"). Most of the questions were about British TV programs, so we didn't know a lot of the references. It was still fun to see how the show was filmed and to see the numerous "re-takes" and "do-overs" that were necessary. We have tickets for a sit-com filming later in the week, too.

Tomorrow we are off to Windsor Castle, Bath and Stonehenge.