The Tower of London

Today we started out on the tube at 9:30 am to make our way to the Tower of London. This is a historical site located on Tower Hill on the Thames river. When we first arrived we stopped to take a look at the ceramic poppies in what used to be the moat, which is now just a grass field. This is a new memorial to comemorate those who did in World War 2. When the memorial is finished there will be over 888,000 ceramic poppies placed in the ground. It was super amazing to see in person, but of course, no picture we could take from our distance could do it any justice.

Once we got inside the walls we quickly rushed to see the Crown Jewels. There is a little bit of confusion if the jewels on display are the actual originals or if they are just replicas, but either way the are all real DeBeers diamonds and are amazing. We went through the exhibit twice because the first time we missed the video at the beginning of the current Queen Elizabeth's coronation. That was a super interesting thing to watch. I want to attend one of those! So extreme and fancy.

We went into the "white tower" next, which is where the Tower of London gets its real fame. Its large and in the center  of everything. We viewed lots of armor and swords and different weapons. We read a few cool stories about the Two princes who mysteriously went missing/died. And a few other creepy torture stories. One part I liked that was out side of the Tower was the "Beasts of the Tower" exhibition. Apparently they used to have a pet polar bear that was chained up somewhere at the tower but had the freedom to go into the Thames and fish! Lots of monkeys and other wild animals that had their own rooms around the Tower grounds.

We stayed at the Tower for about 2 and a half hours. We goofed around and took pictures with fake crowns on and i kept my distance from the HUGE ravens that roam all around there. They are like crows on steroids.

I would rate the Tower a 4 out of 5. Specifically because of the crown jewels, everything else was not as exciting!