The tour of the Tower of London was pretty neat. It started at 9:30am. We
began our tour with an explanation of existence and purpose of the Tower by
one of the BeefEaters. After that we were free to view the exhibits,
including the Crown Jewels of past. Then we went into the main tower to view
the exhibits there.
This is a model of what the Tower of London looks like today.
The tall building in the center is the actual Tower of London, that's
where the prisoners were kept, along with the crown jewels. It seems a bit
odd to me that they kept the valuables in the same building as the
criminals, but I guess it worked for them... The picture below shows what it
actually looks like today. They call the center building The White Tower.
This building has undergone extensive cleaning to restore it closer to its
original appearance.
This is what the layout of the tower looks like...
Of interesting note, was the chapel in the tower, which was Spartan, but
still interesting to see.
From the visitor entrance to the Tower of London, you can see The Tower
Bridge shown below. It was pretty overcast this morning, but we still
haven't had any rain since we arrived.
We finished up at the Tower of London at 11:30am, minus a few of the non-english
speaking participants, affectionately referred to by our tour guide as "The
Mexicans". I'm not sure they were actually Mexican, but once our guide Alan
coined the phrase, it stuck. Our tour guide Alan used to be a policeman
before he retired, although you couldn't tell by looking at him. He had
quite a sense of humor.
|