Fotografo de Bodas, Santiago

August 18, 2011

I have a couple quick announcements to make.

First off, while we were in France, I did a little work for Tablet Hotels. We stayed in an amazing hotel (Hotel Banke) and of course, I did what I do, and took pictures of it! Check it out here. The hotel was gorg. You have to see it!

And then I also wanted to mention that I photographed the lovely and talented Charmaine Pauls a while back so that she’d have an author picture for her book. Well the day has finally come for her book release, so you should check it out! The story sounds really interesting and I’m sure Charmaine is a good writer. Show her some love!

Now, as for the post, I can’t believe I haven’t written about this already. I swear I had put this up a while ago, back when I was doing all my London posts, but that’s not the case because I can’t find it anywhere in my searches.

While we were in London we decided to do a Jack the Ripper tour with our friends Francine and André. They’d been living in London for a while at that point and had been meaning to go but hadn’t gotten around to it. What better time than when you have tourists visiting, right?

Our guide was excellent. He said he used to work as a journalist, and clearly when he talked he was well researched on the subject. I got the feeling that researching the Jack the Ripper case may have been something of a hobby for him as he seemed very into it.

We walked around the area where Jack the Ripper’s victims were found and went through the neighborhood seeing where each one had been killed.

It’s funny how famous Jack the Ripper is, to this day even. Compared to some other crazy serial killers, he’s not a biggie, really. He only murdered 5 people. Only. Ha. What a horrible thing to type. 5 are still human lives. But it’s true. Compared to say, Ted Bundy or even Charles Manson, his number is low. I guess the fascination remains in the fact that he was never caught and the case remains a mystery to this day.

The neighborhood were the killings were committed was very low-income in the late 1800′s, when Jack was on the loose. If I am remembering correctly, this building here was a sort of half way house where prostitutes and drug addicts lived back then and one of his victims was a resident there.

It seems odd to think of real people living in this historic district now a days. I feel like I wouldn’t want to, like I’d forever be haunted by the victims’ ghosts — and just the fact that tourists are crawling all over the place to hear more about the grizzliness is a really weird vibe to me.

The Princess Alice was a pub where the police’s man suspect, a man called “Leather Apron,” was regularly drunk and merry. Or something like that.

The weather was not exactly tropical the day we took our walking tour. It’s not like we were on Gran Canaria holidays or somewhere warm. It was FREEZING the whole time we were on the tour. It started raining at one point and we were all chilled to the bone. By the end of it I think we were all dreaming of hot chocolate and cuddling near a fireplace.

BUT. Did it set the ambiance mood or did it not? Let me answer my own question — it did! I felt waaaaay more creeped out walking around in the storm than I would’ve if it were a regular sunny day! The guide asked if we wanted to cut the tour short but fortunately nobody in our group did. After all, how many times are we going to be on vacation in London and when will have another chance to do this? Probably not any time soon.

Here’s another pub connected to the case. I can’t remember what it was called but the police had another suspect for the murders and he lived here. Some people still claim that this guy really was Jack the Ripper. If I remember correctly, the man who lived here was a surgeon, and so had all the tools to do what Jack did — cut out the organs in a surgical way.

He was arrested but let go because he had an alibi. That’s IT! Can you believe it? On those days, all they had to go on was people’s word.

Afterwards, we headed to a restaurant to grab a bite and meet up with Anna and Andrew. I saw this girl eating there and thought her look was definitely interesting. Simple, but still caught my eye. I like the way Londoners mix seasons.

Anyways, I know a lot of travelers don’t like doing guided tours. But in this case, I felt like it was well worth the money. The man was an expert on the subject. He clearly knew far more about Jack the Ripper than we ever will. If I’m interested in the subject, why wouldn’t I want to pay to hear more about it?

When you travel, do you do guided tours? Does doing them make you feel like less of a hardcore traveler?

16 Comments

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16 Comments

Great shots from London…makes me miss it! I love it there. I’ve been thinking of basing myself in Asia next year but lately I’ve been starting to wonder if I shouldn’t make old blighty home for a little while.

I really enjoyed the Ripper tour when I did it, but was a little disappointed it wasn’t a bit more graphic. It was the dead of winter when I did it so the streets definitely had an eerie atmosphere but I thought the guide really held back some of the more interesting details.

Comment by Megan — August 18, 2011 @ 7:38 am

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I think a tour guide can totally make it or break it. Our tour guide was pretty graphic in the descriptions of how they all died and what Jack the Ripper did to the women. I was cringing at a lot of points!

Comment by kyle — August 18, 2011 @ 12:48 pm

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I went on a Jack the Ripper tour when I was in London, too. Mine was in the dead of winter, at night and it snowed most of the tour. It was definitely creepy. I don’t remember who my guide was, but it could have been the same one, going off the journalist reference. It was an older, fabulously English man who has written quite a lot about Jack. I like tours with experts, too. I’m not much for guides in general, but in cases like a Jack the Ripper tour, I think it makes sense.

Comment by Alison — August 18, 2011 @ 2:24 pm

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Creepy and cool right? Sounds like the same guy!

Comment by kyle — August 19, 2011 @ 12:54 am

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Guided tours? Yeah, when it’s something that interests me and it’s the only way I can have access to it! We did a great underground tour in Berlin where we got to see tons of graffiti (which I love) we never would have found on our own.

Comment by Margaret — August 18, 2011 @ 5:02 pm

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Exactly, if it’s a subject that’s interesting and if you don’t know as much on your own or wouldn’t be able to get to the places on your own, why not do a guided tour?

Comment by kyle — August 19, 2011 @ 12:55 am

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It definitely depends on the tour, but you are right the guide can make a huge difference. I love the 5th shot with the old / new buildings juxtaposed. Awesome.

Comment by Rita — August 18, 2011 @ 6:13 pm

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Yay, glad you noticed, that was my favorite shot of the day!

Comment by kyle — August 19, 2011 @ 12:55 am

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I don’t exactly jump on the first 40-person bus tour I can find, but I definitely think there are tours that enhance your enjoyment of a place. I’m glad this was one of the good ones!

Comment by Emily in Chile — August 18, 2011 @ 7:39 pm

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No I’m not saying they’re all amazing, but I definitely don’t think people should discount guided tours as automatically being crappy and boring!

Comment by kyle — August 19, 2011 @ 12:56 am

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We did one of those haunted ghost tours of Edinburgh when we were there earlier this month and it was pretty good. She had some interesting stories about people who had been murdered or executed and showed us some things you wouldn’t know about just walking around the city normally in the day. I was curious about the Jack the Ripper tours when we were in London but we didn’t end up doing it. Sounds so creepy!

Comment by Andrea — August 19, 2011 @ 8:17 am

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That’s awesome Andrea, our haunted ghost tour in Edinburgh was really cool too. Our guide was sooooo charismatic and also really good at talking about something normal and then all of a sudden yelling and making everybody scream.

Comment by kyle — August 19, 2011 @ 3:06 pm

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I watched a documentary on Jack the Sipper a few weeks ago. It was very interesting… they actually suggested that the murders were linked to a similar one in New York committed a few months later by a recent immigrant.

I like the ghost tours and underground tours and things like that. In general, I’m not really big on tour buses and rushing through all the big sites with a big group, but I really like the tours that go to places that are slightly off the beaten path and have a story behind them with someone who knows the history. I’ve mentioned the Edinburgh one, but there was also a fun underground tour in Seattle and a ghost tour in New Orleans that stand out as being more than worthwhile.

Comment by Robin — August 19, 2011 @ 1:52 pm

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Robin, I loved the Edinburgh one, that we went on based solely off of your recommendation so if I’m ever in Seattle or New Orleans, we will definitely check out their respective underground/ghost tours!

I’ve only been on one of those big bus things once in NYC and it was because we only had one day in the city and had never been there before so we wanted to be rushed around through it all. SO fun. But yeah, the preferable way is to go at a bit of a slower pace than that, which I have since gone back and done

Comment by kyle — August 19, 2011 @ 3:03 pm

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I usually don’t go on guided tours, but I like the idea. I went on several in Argentina and they were bad because they stuff a dozen people in a van that is too crowded to hold that many. It’s a bad experience for men taller than the average Argentinian.

Comment by Mark Brophy — August 20, 2011 @ 1:17 pm

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Very cool. I’ve been meaning to do the Jack the Ripper tour every time I go into London but I always completely forget. Loved your pictures.

Comment by Ceri — September 6, 2011 @ 4:37 pm

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