Tower of London
Post date: 07-Aug-2009 15:29:21
We paid £34 to tour the Tower of London today. The expensive price was worth it because we were entertained for 5 hours. We spent our first hour with a "Yeoman Warder." Yeoman Warders are men who tell stories about the Tower of London. However, they are more than just old men who are great story tellers. To apply to be a Yeoman Warder, you must have been in the military for at least 20 years for example in the Navy or Marines. Our Yeoman Warder gave us a little dating blurb about himself "I am single, 46 and I live in castle." They do actually live in residence in the Tower of London. That would be really cool. Our Yeoman Warder took us inside the Chapel of St John the Evangelist (built in 1519). The remains of some of Henry the eight wives lye in the chapel.
It's amazing that the Tower of London and the grounds have existed since 1270. There used to a moat when you entered the Tower, but since it smelled from all the dead bodies etc, so it was removed a few hundred years ago. We toured the tower and read 500 year old graffiti from various prisoners. We also walked through the torture chamber and viewed the rack and other objects that were used for inhumane acts.
We saw the largest ravens that I have ever seen all over the grounds. Legend has it that Charles II believed if the ravens ever left the kingdom would fall. Unfortunately, we couldn't take too many pictures since most of the rooms we visited had a strict no pictures policy with many security
people watching too.
We saw this exhibit, which showed Henry the VIII obsession with armour for himself and his horses. As Henry became older and fatter over the years, his armour also widened and so did his groin protector. Sorry Henry, but I don't think your penis enlarged as you became fatter. We had a good laugh at the metal armour cups in each piece.
We saved the longest line up and the biggest attraction for the end of the day and that was the Crown Jewels. Of course, photography was not allowed, but Colin managed to sn
eak a few pictures. I can't even imagine how heavy it would be to wear that much gold, diamond, pearls, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. They were all very magnificent and definitely suited for royalty. After we walked past many TV screens showing the Queen wearing the jewelery, we finally arrived at the display cases of the actual jewelery. The actual crowns were housed in a series of display cases with moving sidewalks on either side. This worked quite nicely because we got to see everything without any one tourist blocking a case or hogging the main viewing area.
We saw the coronation spoon, but I couldn't find a replica for my mom. All they had were cheesy spoons with the crown on the end. There was an okay looking Tudor spoon, but also just replicas available in the gift shop of course.
You can view our other 127 pictures here: