The Tower

First of all I think it's a good idea for me to announce that I do not have class on Wednesdays.

So yesterday I promised I would make a post about the Tower of London. I ordered my ticket to get in online for 18 pounds, but I also ordered an audio guide, and that was about 4 pounds. The audio guide wasn't really worth it. There are signs to read everywhere. Perhaps if you don't speak or read English it would be. I think taking a Yeoman tour would be more worth your time (and I'm pretty sure they are free as well). Anyway it was all worth it because I got to stare at the diamond pictured below, the Cullinan I for a good couple of minutes. It is huge. It is gorgeous. It is every woman's dream to own.

Well, okay that may be an exaggeration. Technically the queen doesn't even really own it, she can't just take it out and stare at it whenever she wants to because it's under display pretty much all the time.
Also that is obviously not my picture. You are not allowed to take pictures inside of the Jewel House.
A little kid asked his dad why it was worth so much more than the diamond in his mom's wedding ring and why it was so much bigger.
This is why I want to have kids someday.

The Tower has so much history! One of the first things you see when you walk in is the Bell Tower. There's a well next to it as well. It's odd for me to think that the River Thames used to come up to the walls, because the river is a good number of feet lower now and quite a ways away from the tower. Then you walk past St. Thomas's Tower and Traitor's gate. I thought it was interesting that Anne Boleyn entered through that gate for her coronation and also for her trial/execution. The bloody Tower is across from those two. Sir Walter Raleigh lived, or I suppose was imprisoned there, for quite some time. Supposedly Edward IV's sons were murdered in there by their uncle. I suppose we'll never really know for sure what happened.

They had an model of the types of torture that might go on close to that. I saw a model of the rack and the scavenger's daughter and some iron structure that they'd use to hang people by from their wrists. The room played sounds of the rack being turned and it made my skin crawl. It makes me shiver to think about it now actually, but perhaps that's because it becomes cold in the kitchen. I would think that I'd rather be crushed in the Scavenger's daughter than have my joints pulled apart on the rack, and that I'd prefer to be hung by the wrists over those two, but really I'd prefer not to go through any torture at all. I saw the prisoner carvings in the Beauchamp Tower, but I was also a bit tired by this point and also kind of bothered by the idea that people were contained in a room for months or days all for being Catholic instead of Protestant. Granted some of the prisoners had committed more serious crimes...

The White Tower was interesting to see as well. The height of the tower surprised me a bit. To see the exhibits inside, you only walk up one stair at a time, but you walk down all of them at once and it's really quite a ways down. St. John's chapel was really cool to see. I also saw a toilet and thought it was interesting because it seemed a bit like a modern one although there wasn't much of a seat and there wasn't any plumbing. I would hope they would polish the wood of the surrounding area...I would hate to get a splinter in my backside if I was a soldier.

I walked around, saw the Ravens, chuckled to myself about how superstitious the English are, and got my 18 pounds worth until my feet were tired and my stomach growling.It's a really cool and interesting place to go, and full of history, but I don't really have a whole lot more to say about it.

The White Tower