The Tower of London

This is it folks, The TOWER OF LONDON, full of history, jewels, kings, and torture.

The tower's primary function was a fortress, a royal palace, a prison, and since 1303, home to the Crown Jewels.

The Towers are surrounded by two fortresses and at one time, a mote.

Even though the Towers are not a royal residence, it still remains a royal palace and maintains a permenant guard.

This is where the Crown Jewels are located. No photography was allowed so we couldn't get any photos ourselves.

So, things haven't been panning out like I remember when I was a kid. The crown jewels are now viewed via moving on a conveyor belt (luckily there weren’t too many people so we could go around and around again), the Bloody Tower wasn't as disturbing as I remember (maybe they toned it down for the kiddies) and there just weren’t any Beefeaters to be seen.

 I really wanted to get my photo taken with one here near this patch of grass. I have a photo when I was younger with a Beefeater and I just wanted to recreate that moment. Really, is it too much to ask? Regardless, I made Eric take my photo in the same spot.

(durda-dur)

Here is the White Tower, which is the center of the Tower of London. In this is the King Henry VIII: Dressed to Kill exhibit. It's in celebration of the 500th anniversary of King Henry VIII becoming King of England. It displays some of the rarest armor from the Royal Armories collections. It was very well done.

We wern't allowed to take photos of this either but Eric snuck a few.

We learned that King Henry VIII was quite the sportsmen. And I didn't realize how big he was - 6'1"! I always thought the people back then were just little things. The armor that was made for him was incredible. It covered every square inch of his body and yet allowed him to move freely.

Well, as we were being kicked out... it closes at 5:30 pm and literally a Beefeater shouted at us to say, "It's closed, you'll have to leave", but we still hadn't seen everything. But yep, I found a Beefeater! Yay! No, not really. He wasn't very nice and just crushed my little girl memories of them being so wonderful. I guess some weird girl wanting to get her picture taken is more annoying than a cute little chubby girl. But I didn't care. I was going to get my photo. He didn't want the flash on so it was really hard to get a good shot. He didn't want to look at the camera and said he would look at me instead. Ya, that's not uncomfortable AT ALL. I had to do something so I made him shake my hand.

Since it was still early we thought we would go see a show. But all of the tickets were sold out unless we wanted to spend 60 pounds each ticket. No thanks! We'll wait and get them online at a better price. So, we rode the busses around the city a bit.