A London Layover

Towers, Towers Everywhere

I spent the better part of a day in London as part of a northern European cruise.  While I did not get to spend a lot of time in the famous city, the time I had was well spent exploring some of the city's more famous sites.

Posing in the quintessential red London phone booth, trying to be more outside since the inside was gross.

The first thing we headed for after disembarking the train that brought us to London was the Tower of London.  Part castle, part museum, and all about history, the Tower of London was the not-to-be missed site my geeky history buff brain had chosen.  We arrived at the tower so early in the morning, it wasn't even open yet.  We caught our breath and spent thirty minutes walking around the mote encircling the Tower up and down the banks of the Thames posing for photos and just generally enjoying the cool summer weather.

Posing in front of the Tower of London before we went in, more a castle than a simple tower.

Once the tower ticket office opened, we were first in line to pay our entrance fees and head inside.  The structure of the Tower follows the shape of a rectangle, with most of the interior space being taken up by a courtyard, with a smaller square tower erected (the original tower now called the White Tower) within the courtyard.  Visitors enter the tower via a gate to the courtyard near the river Thames.  Almost directly across the courtyard lies the entrance to viewing rooms for the crown jewels, the first exhibit we sought out. 

These funky statues erected during the last London Olympics dot the streets.  I pose with this one in front of Tower Bridge.

I was accompanied to the Tower by my boyfriend David, who had already visited the Tower a few years prior.  He skipped a visit to the crown jewels though, because there was an hour wait to get inside.  Being some of the first people inside the museum that day, we walked right up the the crown jells exhibit entrance ignoring the layers of roping used to snake long lines of visitors expected later in the day.  The jewels were beautiful (no photography allowed inside), and there were certainly plenty of them.  I can't help but think I would have been disappointed if I had to wait an hour to see them though.

Beefeaters guard the entrance to the building in the Tower of London that houses the crown jewels.

Having gotten the glitz and glamour show out of the way, we moved on to some of the more historical exhibits.  I particularly liked the armory, housed in the White Tower's prime real-estate smack dab in the middle of the courtyard.  The armory is home not only to spears and swords and crossbows, but also suits of armor of famous kings, including Henry the VIII.  Henry the VIII has got to be the most well known king in Americans, due to the number of TV shows and movies (most famously The Tudors on HBO and The Other Bolyen Girl) featuring his greedy actions.  Henry the VIII was the king who separated England from the Roman Catholic Church, starting the Church of England because he wanted to divorce his old barren wife in favor of a young more fertile one (Anne Bolyen).  Of course things did not go so well for the conniving Anne as the famous rhyme about the fates of Henry the VIII's wives goes, Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived.  Anne was executed by her husband for treason, when in reality he was just pissed she kept miscarrying any male heirs, only live birthing their daughter and future Queen of England Elizabeth I.  Scientists now think all of Henry's wives' miscarriages were due to a genetic disorder he carried.

These friendly Yeomen Warders let me take a photo with them.  They can be seen all over the tower's grounds.

 Henry the VIII is almost equally as famous for how he died.  A fit young man, after breaking his leg on a horse riding accident, he began to gain weight until his death, when he weighed well over three hundred pounds.  Legend has it his body could not be moved from his bed for some days after his death, due to its weight, and it exploded as gases of decay built up in his body.  In the White Tower showcasing Henry the VIII's armor, suit after suit of armor is displayed, each on bigger than the last, until the King got so big they stopped trying to keep up. At some point they must have realized he was never going to don armor again.

Big Ben high above me in the Elizabeth Tower, a part of the Palace of Westminster, a lot of names in one building.

Durring our time in the tower, we also visited the dungeon, little more than a bright and sunny single room not even underground, and the tower ravens housed in cages of the courtyard.  By the time we left, it was bustling with people walking up and down the narrow hallways of the buildings.

Friendly notes painted on the pavement remind pedestrians from other parts of the world where cars are coming from.

We spent the rest of our day in London wandering around and taking in the typical sights.  Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, St. Jame's Park, and Picadilly Circus (a small circular city square) all made their ways onto our walking itinerary.  By the time we made it back to the train headed out of the city we were beat.  If my body were not so drained from our early start, I could have spent more hours just wandering around London.  London is one of those rare cities, where a stroll down the street provides as much entertainment as a museum or show.

The famous red double decker buses and underground sign in this photo highlight the two famous public transit systems in the city.