The Tower of London: Dreams Do Come True

The Tower of London

I was so excited to see the Tower.

My second day in London began bright and early, since my friend Chris and I had agreed to meet at the Tower of London at 8:30.  I checked out of the hostel, walked to Paddington Station, and took the Underground to Tower Hill.  From the second I first saw the Tower, I couldn't stop smiling.  I cannot remember a time when I didn't want to visit the Tower of London, and now I was finally here, with a whole day to explore it.  It just seemed so surreal.

The space in front of the Tower was deserted, since it didn't actually open until 10:00 (not 9:00 like Chris and I thought), but the Welcome Centre was open.  I got my ticket from the attendant and asked about a place to leave my overnight bag, since I didn't want to lug it around the Tower all day.  Probably assuming I didn't have a pass for the tube, she kindly gave me a map and showed me how to get to Liverpool Street Station, telling me there was a luggage hold there where I could pay to leave my bag.  Now, London is not laid out in a sensible grid, or anything resembling a grid, unlike most cities, so I got lost several times on the "quick walk" to the station.  Having checked my bag in, I discovered that Liverpool Street has a tube station that is a mere two stops from Tower Hill.  Needless to say, I took the train back to the Tower.

Chris was waiting for me at the decidedly more crowded Welcome Centre, having arrived shortly after I left for Liverpool Street.  We haven't hung out much since his graduation last year, so we had plenty to catch up on while standing in line to enter the Tower.  Once inside, we made a beeline for the Crown Jewels; one of Mom's friends currently living in London had advised me to see those first and avoid the lines.  Chris agreed that it was slightly disappointing that the display was not set up as shown in a certain episode of Sherlock, but the jewels (and banquet dishes, including the biggest punch bowl I have ever seen and a ladle that looked like a scepter in its own right) were spectacular and well worth visiting.  We weren't allowed to take pictures, otherwise I would have many sparkly things to post.

The Yeoman Warder who led our tour

Having oohed and ahhed, we ran back to the moat for the next Yeoman Warder tour, where one of the uniformed "Beefeaters" had just stepped onto his podium to begin.  He told us about the history of the fortress itself as he took us under the arch back into the Tower, showed us where the national mint used to be, pointed out the Bloody Tower and Traitors' Gate, and told us of various nobles and criminals who had met their tragic (or almost comedic) ends on Tower Hill or Tower Green.

A memorial near where our tour ended marks where the scaffolds were once built for executions such as those of Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey.  Tragic and eerie though it may be, there was something fantastic about walking across the same place they had walked.  This feeling continued throughout the Tower - it's simply saturated with history.

Ravens!

For example, the ravens are living traditions.  Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the White Tower will crumble, the monarchy will fall, and a great disaster will befall the whole country.  So the Yeoman Warders keep eight of the birds around just in case.

Charles I's armor

The guided tour over, Chris and I found our own way through the Bloody Tower, which told the story of some of its famous prisoners, including the two young princes who died mysteriously at the supposed command of their uncle, Richard III.  Then we went through the White Tower, where the princes' bodies were discovered under the stairs.  This tower was also home to the Line of Kings, one of the world's longest running tourist attractions.  Royal armor from past kings was shown off here to impress visitors, complete with decked-out life-size figures of horses for jousting displays.  Weapons adorned the walls, including guns, swords, and a few fearsome looking axes.

Henry's bedchamber in St. Thomas's Tower

After the White Tower, we went through St. Thomas's Tower just over Traitors' Gate.  Here were the rooms Henry III and his son, Edward I, had used as a royal residence.  One room was set up as it would have been when King Henry lived there, as well as the chapel where he would have received visitors and even conducted affairs of state.  Up and down a few more spiral stairs, and we were out on the top of the Tower wall, looking over the Thames on one side and looking into the Tower on the other.

By this point we were both getting hungry.  Chris found out I still hadn't tried fish and chips and insisted that I must experience the dish in a true London pub.  So we found The Hung, Drawn and Quartered, ordered our quintessential English food, and talked.  (I don't normally like fish, but the food was actually really good!)

Normally I don't take pictures of my food.
But this was my first fish and chips!

Chris had plans for the afternoon, so we parted ways after lunch.  I headed back to Liverpool Street Station to retrieve my luggage, then went to King's Cross St. Pancras to drop it off again at another luggage hold.  Having no WiFi and therefore no way of contacting my group members to discover their locations, I decided to seek out the Royal Veterinary College on behalf of my sister.  It was closed when I found it, so I took a few pictures.  I then proceeded to get lost while trying to find the nearest Underground station.

A cool bench at the British Library

With no other ideas, I headed back to King's Cross, where I found out that the British Library was right next door!  I meant to look at the manuscripts and exhibitions in this wonderful building, but I was so happy to have WiFi and a place to sit down that I ended up on Pinterest until they announced that the building was closing.  Since they kicked me out, I figured I might as well head to Westminster Abbey to try to find the others for an organ recital they had mentioned.  We did, in fact, find each other, and we managed to edge into the back of the Abbey to hear the free organ recital.  Even though we didn't get to properly tour the church (or even really see much of it over the heads of the other listeners), it was interesting to experience Westminster Abbey for the first time with deep, swelling music from an unseen source while I marveled at the vastness overhead.

Westminster Abbey

Once the recital ended and they shooed us out of the church, we took the tube back to Paddington to grab Marissa's luggage from the hostel, then proceeded to St. Pancras so we would be there in plenty of time for our return train.  I retrieved my own bag from the luggage hold, we all bought some dinner, and the last remaining members of our group joined us at the station for our return trip.  As wonderful as London was, we were all very, very happy to see our familiar flat back in Nottingham.

Traitors' Gate

Another Update
Sorry this post is already so long, but I realized I didn't write anything about last Thursday or Friday.  This was mostly because nothing really happened; we presented our iPad photo projects to Bhav, tried Pimm's at lunch, and toured Bromley House Library (Google it, I'll write another thousand words if I let myself gush about it here).  There are also very few pictures from those days, but we all agreed it was nice to have a few less intense days between Oxford and London.