Wednesday, July 20, 2011

London Tower

We visited London Tower today. They said that it wasn't that crowded today but it sure seemed like it. We felt like cattle being herded everywhere. And it got annoying how people just pushed their way through things and people. I felt a little burnt out on tourism too, but it was still cool to see. I was reminded why I don't really like museums. Too many placards and only half of them are actually interesting. They had an audio tour but it cost money. Seemed a bit overpriced, but oh well. We had to see it :)

Original foundations I think?


Tower of London!




London Tower and Tower Bridge


The entry to London Tower


The Portcullis


Mint Street where the money used to be made


The White Tower


Where the Crown Jewels are kept. Lots of guards and vaults. And lots and lots of diamonds, rubies, sapphires. We saw the biggest and second biggest diamond in the world: The star of Africa and the second star of Africa. No photography inside though. Google!


The guard outside


Standing in line to see the jewels


Figuring out where to go next


He's marching!


Us and the guard!


As we went into the White Tower, I got a picture of the ravens. Legend has it that six ravens must always be at the London Tower. If they ever leave then the White Tower will crumble and the monarchy will fall. They actually have 8 ravens there currently. And they can live up to 45 years in captivity!


Doug and the armor


Armor of King Henry VIII


Another piece of Henry VIII's armor. Compensating much?


Called "The Line of Kings" From what I understand, these are made with each King to represent their horse? And now they have them where the original menagerie was. Apparently many exotic animals were kept here, including a polar bear which was tied by a rope when it was allowed to hunt for fish in the Thames. But lions, elephants, leopards, snakes, etc. were all given as gifts from around the world and kept here until the London Zoo was opened in the late 1800s.


Model of the Tower of London. Best picture I can give you of what is all here.


Dragon thing made out of various artillery and armor.


Archer simulator


Just missed a bull's eye, but not bad!


First good glimpse of Tower Bridge from the ramparts of London Tower. Our guide had told us that the best pictures could be taken up there, but I got some better ones later




The chapel in Tower Hill. Anne Bolelyn and Catherine Howard are buried here, among others


The changing of the guard. They took the places of the guys in red




Tower Hill, where most of the public executions took place (unless you were royalty or friends with royalty). Kind of funny how people think we're so violent now, when it was an exciting thing to go watch someone's head get chopped off and then carried to London Bridge (their bodies were buried in London Tower, usually in unmarked graves).


This is where royalty has always entered Tower Hill. On the other side and across a walk are stairs leading from the Thames where the boats would dock


Tower Bridge!


It was painted red, white, and blue for one of the Queen's jubilees. Normally those areas were a chocolate brown


Walking through the bridge


Us and Tower Bridge!


The view of the walkways underneath


The real London Bridge (we have the bridge before this one in Arizona. Our guide joked that "now America has a piece of history")


View from one of the walkways of the London skyline. The Shard (soon to be the tallest building in Europe), St. Paul's, London Bridge, etc.


View of London the other way, from the other walkway. I don't know any of these buildings, although the O2 is barely seen between two skyscrapers on the left (big venue)


View of London Tower from the walkway.


Different Kit-Kat Bar packaging!!


This was what I was talking about with the chips :) And it's Walker's instead of Lay's!


London Tower from the other side


Since we had an underground pass for the day we decided to go and try to see platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross. Unfortunately you have to have an actual train ticket (which we expected) in order to even see the platforms. Plus I think they filmed it in a different part than King's Cross. I think it was at St. Pancras, which is right next door. This is the station that I recognized though!


We made it back to the flat and we were sooo hungry. We had only snacked on a tube of pringles and a Mars bar (our Milky Way). So we ordered pizza hut :)



I was really really tired after we ate. We watched an episode of Friends but I was dozing off the whole time. So at 8:30 I crawled into bed and went to sleep. I slept for 12 hours (kept waking up but still!), and had a lot of weird dreams!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

ooo the pizza hut looks good! and the walkway on the tower looks horrifying! and that dragon looked freaking awesome. what was the purpose of that??

do the kit kats taste the same? and crazy about the chips. i was telling my sister about that yesterday in the store and a guy walking by seemed to know about it, but he still seemed like he was slightly confused on what we were talking about. lol

-allison

Rochelle and Doug said...

haha i don't know the purpose of the dragon...I dunno if there was one besides just art. And we didn't try the kit-kats, but the mars bar didn't taste different...but their skittles and sour skittles do. Haha so I don' t know if they just make their fruit candy different or what! And we tried the rowntown's. They're good, but I didn't like the grape one lol

Allison said...

that's because it isn't grape, it's currant. lol! I used to think it was funky grape too, then i had my dad try one and he informed me i was mistaken. and then i decided to read the ingredients. oh well! ;) interesting about the skittles though. they are meant to be the same flavors and everything, just taste funky?

Rochelle and Doug said...

haha interesting. Well, I didn't like that one! And yeah, they're the same flavors...just different. Hard to explain lol. We tried a candy by Haribo called Tangfastics that we really liked. They were an assortment of sour gummies, including the coke bottle gummies

Karen said...

So the original London Bridge is in Phoenix? I love you two! It's great getting to hear from you! Hope I can get internet while I'm in Hawaii so I can keep up on your adventures! :) Thank you so much for sharing.

Rochelle and Doug said...

Well, the 4th one is in Arizona...the one currently in London is the 5th one haha