British Life and Culture - #15

Today I went with Haley, Lauren, and Anna Marie to the Tower of London. I was supposed to go with Emily, Kelsey, Anna, and Mary earlier in the trip but the day they went I wasn't feeling well so I decided to stay at the flat. I'm really glad I got to go today though so I didn't miss out on anything!

We met at the tube station at 11 and headed to the Tower of London. We got our tickets and went inside. It was so big that we didn't know what to do first or which direction to go in. We wandered into the closest tower and went from there. One tower led to another so before we knew it, we were on a completely different side of the palace.

The Tower of London was once used to hold prisoners and they were actually kept in these different towers. In some of them there was "prisoner's graffiti," words etched on the stone walls. One of the coolest things we saw was in the Bloody Tower. There is a story of two Little Princes, who were kept there. The myth is that they were brought there by their uncle and eventually murdered so he could have the throne. No one knows whether or not this is true but the two little boys did in fact disappear. During a time of reconstruction, the bones of two young boys were dug up. They were then buried at the foot of a stairwell somewhere in the Tower of London.

In another tower, there was an exhibition of the "royal beasts." There was a saying, "What do you give someone who has everything?" Back then, kings would give each other wild and exotic animals as gifts. Henry VIII had some of the rarest animals from all corners of the world when he lived there. He had lions, tigers, eagles, owls, elephants, and kangaroos. He even had a polar bear that was on a long chain so it could go swimming in the Thames River.

The Tower of London was also used as a royal home. We walked through a room that was Edward I's bedchamber.

My favorite thing we saw were the crown jewels. They have been on display at the Tower of London since the 17th century. They had the most beautiful and extravagant crowns and even swords covered in diamonds. I loved the coronation crown that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned with in 1953. It's the same crown that she wears every time she opens Parliament. We watched a video of an opening of Parliament in class and there was a whole ceremony that was centered around that very crown. On camera the crown looks much smaller but it was pretty big. And the diamonds on it were even bigger.

This is where the crown jewels are kept.

We then walked around outside and saw a monument. It listed all of the people who had been killed there. On the list was Anne Boleyn! It said she had been beheaded in this area.