London Part 3

On our third day in London, we really started in on our touristy visits. We spent the morning at the Tower of London, a real castle set right along the Thames River. Its not just one tower but many different buildings all with a lot of history. My mom is awesome and found a two for one coupon, too, so we only paid half-price to get in! The Tower of London houses the Crown Jewels of England, which was our first stop at 9:30 AM or so. They are one of the most popular attractions at the Tower and can be quite backed up. However, as we were there so early in the day, we had no lines whatsoever!

The Crown Jewels are literally inside of a giant vault. When you enter, you enter through a vault door. There are actually several rooms housing the numerous treasures and then you exit through another vault door. Everything was enclosed in glass. They had everything from coronation robes to dishes to scepters. They even had a giant gold bowl that could hold 144 bottles of wine! It was crazy. The big attraction, though, were the crowns. They are set up with a moving sidewalk on either side so you can't really stand in front for too long. They are so cool to see, though, as several of them contain some of the biggest diamonds ever found.

After seeing the jewels, we did a tour with one of the residents of the tower, called a Beefeater. They are the ceremonial guards of the tower, formerly in charge of looking after the prisoners who were held there and such. They now are basically in charge of things like tours. The guy who did our tour was hilarious and we learned all about the history of the tower, which included quite a few beheadings. I am actually supposedly related to Mary, Queen of Scotts, who was held there before her execution.

After the morning at the Tower of London, we made our way by tube to this station that had tons of food. It was a really hot day out and we were all really overheated, so it was nice to relax for a bit with some cold drinks. After that, we made our way over to Westminster Abbey. It was really beautiful in there, and really interesting as well. We all did individual audio tours. One of my favorite areas was the poets corner, where they commemorated all of the authors that were buried there.

My mom and I were going to do a bike tour through London starting at 3:30, but we lost track of Jen in the Abbey. My mom and I tried running for it, but we would have been late, so we just had to skip the tour. So once we found Jen, we all made our way over to Harrods, a giant department store in London. We had dinner from there and then made our way back to the hotel. We hung out in the dining area where there was A/C and power plugs for our laptops.

Overall, it was a really great day to see some cool stuff in London.