Saturday we were able to sleep in a little bit because we weren't meeting Maria and Tom until 11am. Once the whole group was together our blue badge guide took us to Hanger Hill where they used to hang people. From there we went to the Tower of London. When you go into all of these important places there is usually a security check of some sort, so we have already expected that but our tour guide warned us of it and said something about making sure we had no bombs or weapons. At that point I looked at Tom, who was standing next to me and I gave him my uneasy (sarcastic) face. He said, " I hope you left your weapons at home today." I responded, "I did but I forgot to leave the bombs." It was funny, I promise.
I forgot to set the story. It was raining pretty intensely during the whole outdoor tour and of course by the time we were set free to go inside, it had stopped. I believe Tom put it as "Ah, another beautiful day." haha.
While at the Tower of London we saw the Crown Jewels. There were so many beautiful crowns including Her Majesty The Queen's that were used at her coronation in 1953. We saw the Medieval Palace and did the wall walks (we meaning me and Sara). We heard the stories on our tour about prisoners at the Tower including Lady Jane who was sent to death. The instruments of torture were on display and we could see Bloody Tower.
There are also wire sculptures of all the Royal Beasts. Since King John, the Tower housed lions, tigers, eagles, owls, elephants, kangaroos, zebras, snakes, and a polar bear. The mindset was, what do you give someone that has everything? Well, royal, exotic animals. They were quite proud of their lions, especially when they had cubs. Their polar bear was walked on a leash out to the river so it could hunt it's own fish. Snakes were wrapped in blankets and kept on a stove to keep warm. Uncaged monkeys lived in a room where visitors could walk among them but it was shut down after a monkey attacked a boy. A tower ostrich died after someone fed it a nail but it was done because they thought ostriches ate iron. There were royal beasts at the Tower for over 600 years but they left in 1832 to start the London zoo. I obviously found this section to be particularly interesting. Something else to add are the Ravens. Legend has it that Charles II was told that if the ravens ever left the Tower, the kingdom and the fortress would colllapse. Just to be safe they have some of the wings clipped and they feed them dry biscuits and live mice. They are treated really well! One lived to be 42 years old.
The tower is full of stories. It was a prison, a torture chamber, a kingdom where royalty lived...and the stories are endless. Something I forgot to add is that they also had armor on display and Henry VIII was obnoxious and tried to make up for an area in which he was lacking. And let's just say that area is incredibly large and unneccessary.
Sara and I went to the cafe and I had this delicious sandwich with cream cheese, cucumber, red pepper and some other whatnots for only 2 pounds 50. There were these waffle sticks outside that were teasing us and looked amazing but those alone were like 3 opunds 50 once you added a topping and we couldn't justify that. Oh, another thing I forgot to mention is that only one person ever has tried to steal the Crown Jewels and do you know what his punishment was? A pension and some land. No one knows why and it was all kept hush hush but it is official that the only person that tried to steal them was in fact rewarded.
We met back up with our group for our boat ride down River Thames.
No comments:
Post a Comment