January 10, 2012

Windy day next to the Tower Bridge

I got to check out The Tower of London with my class on Tuesday. On the way there I stopped and checked out the Tower Bridge. Basically that’s all I have to say about the bridge. It was a cool, long, blue bridge.

Tower of London

Outside The Tower of London. Very ancient and famous. I got to see the crown jewels that consisted of several crowns in front of a moving floor that was only a couple feet long. They had the Star of Africa in a scepter, and that thing was freaking huge! It was almost the size of my fist! I'm going to make sure I get one of those things.

Just chilling in an ancient privy.  It was well cleaned, don't worry.

We saw armor, weapons, swords, pistols, knives, cannons, bows, etc. of hundreds of past British kings. Super fancy and old stuff. This picture, however, is of an ancient toilet room. And believe it or not, I had to wait in line to take a picture in this little room. It was the popular place in the building.

A great fat raven

So this is one of the cool famous wing0clipped ravens that live around the castle. They hop around the grounds and occasionally attempt to fly around, but since their wings are clipped they kind of smash into the ground. It's actually pretty scary, because we got dive-bombed by a couple ravens while we were there. There is a legend that if the ravens leave the kingdom will fall. We were walking around the castle and saw this big group of tourists taking pictures of this particular raven on the wall, and of course, like any tourists, decided to join in. While we were watching this great big raven, we heard some British people behind us comment, “That’s what happened to mummy. She’s a great fat raven now.” Then they walked off. It was probably one of the best moments of my life.

One of the many, many guards I'll see while in London

A picture with one of the famous guards on the grounds. I felt suuuper awkward creeping up to the guard and getting a picture with him, especially since he just stood there staring at me awkwardly stalk up to him to take a picture. We got to see the changing of the guards, which is actually pretty boring. A group of 4 guards just stomp across the courtyard and go hide in the castle every hour or so. I asked some policemen around the castle what would happen if someone was to stand in the guard's way where they were going to be marching. Would the guards go around them? Would they push said person out of their way? I made sure the policemen knew that I was not intending to be the person that tried this out, I just wanted to know what would happen. He said that the guards would basically trample anyone in their way. He then said that if I was planning on trying this out to let him know so he could film it and put it on youtube.