London Tower

On day two we headed out in the morning and wanted to start our day with the London Tower.  Everything said to give yourself three hours to go through it.  We didn't think that we would need that much time, but it really did.  There was so much to see in there and we didn't dilly dally either (you can't too much with four young boys).  There is a lot of history there and you know how much I love history.  :-) 

 

So the Steelers were playing in London which is why our friends wanted to go to London so my boys had to show their Seahawk pride!!!  We found at least a dozen other people with Seahawk gear on in London which was pretty good since they weren't even playing.  :-)

 

Our two "pack mules" - they were great in carrying all of our stuff around London.

 

 

Jack getting ready to cut AJ's head off - check out the smile!  Cracked me up.

 

Michael's turn to get his head chopped off.   

 

We went to the London Tower first thing and boy am I glad that we did.  There weren't that many people there, there was no line to get in.  When we left there were tons of people and the line was huge to get in!!  Like I said, we hit everything just right while we were in London.

 

 

The lions that were guarding the gate.  During Edward I's rule, passing under fortified gate towers defended by archers, you could hear the roar of these lions upon crossing the causeways and drawbridges that spanned the water-filled moat.  They had many of these animals all around the area.  They were famous for a zoo - but I will tell you more about that later.  :-)   

 

They did re-enactments of many different kinds.  So the Tower of London has had a military presence for over 2000 years.  There are six towers in total.  The moat around the tower was built by workers from Holland and worked in conjunction with the tidal wave.  They dumped rubbish into the river and then it was supposed to be wiped out into the river.  Well the moat was 15 feet deeper than the bay so the rubbish would stay.  They finally had to stop doing that because there was such a stench.

 

 

This building was outside the tower and is where they held executions.  The first one was in 1381 - the arch Bishop of Canterbury.  When they held executions it was a big public party really.  After the execution they had to hold the head aloft and then they put the head on a pike and paraded it all through London.  The last execution was in 1747, Simon Fraser. 

 

 

We headed up to the towers and had a great view of the London bridge.

 

 

There is a legend that if the raven should ever leave the Tower, the kingdom will fall. 

 

I thought this was a good view of all the different architecture they have there.

 

The boys being silly with one of the "soldiers".

 

Michael was threatening to "jump" off the wall - I love his expression!!!

 

 

This was the door to the royal residence - I like the little letter slot.  :-) 

 

The four boys heading up the stairs to see what other secrets the towers held. 

 

 

Michael in King Edward's bedroom in the St Thomas' Tower.  Later it was divided up with partitions, soldiers and Yeoman Warders lived here.  The Deputy Governors lived here until 1988.  King Edward I spent most of his life on the move.  He had many castles and lodgings and only stayed in the Tower of London for a total of 53 days.  His queens had their own household but went nearly everywhere with him.  Up to 700 people moved with the King, travelling only 15 miles a day.  It took up to 1000 horses to transport the King's household.  To feed them all, they ate over 200kg of wheat and malt, 1,500 cattle, 3,000 sheep, 1,200 pigs, and 400 bacon carcasses plus large quantities of fish and poultry.  They also enjoyed plenty of wine - over 12,000 liters were ordered for Christmas Day in 1286.

 

 

This was in the Salt Tower for the Prisoners of the Tower.  The prisoners that were kept here carved many things into the walls all throughout.  This is only one of them. 

Of course next to the prisoners had to be the soldiers.  Here is Michael and AJ holding one of the weapons.  

 

 

 

The boys in one of the old time soldier helmets.

 

 

I thought this was hilarious - it says always use protective clothing, in emergency call surgeon.

 

This was written on the pathways between the towers.

 

Check out the hat on this "soldier" - he is a Seahawk fan!!!

 

This is nicknamed the bullet - as you can probably guess why.  It is over three times the height of Niagara Falls. 

 

Finally the animals are caged!!!  So I eluded to this earlier - the zoo.  For a long time, powerful rulers tried to impress each other by exchanging living gifts.  They thought the exotic animals at the Tower showed the wealth and strength of the King.  Animals were sent to the Tower from the furthest corners of the known world.  Lions were the most important royal beasts and were kept here for 600 years.  There were over 60 species on show.  Un-caged monkeys lived in a room where visitors could walk among them.  It was shut down after a monkey attacked a boy.  Many of the wild animals ended up attacking people.  In 1832 the last Royal Beasts left the tower for the new London Zoo.

 

This was pretty cool!!  You couldn't take photos of them, but they had the past crown jewels on display.  Most of the precious gems and such are taken out of each crown and used for the next one. 

 

 

No matter what is playing, when there is a TV on the kids are zombies.  At least this was educational though.

 

 

Outside with a suit of armor.

 

Inside they had a sensor of when you were near and it put a helmet on you and actually moved with you.  Here is AJ with it on, Michael is in the bottom corner waiting for his turn. 

 

 

David and Michael with one of the Yeoman Warders.  Interesting fact about them, they have to serve in the military for over 30 years before they can become a Yeoman. 

 

The kids decided it would be fun to try and feed the ravens.

 

Well after AJ was bitten, they all decided to keep their distance.

 

 

Then we went to the bloody tower.  This was the one the boys were waiting for the whole time.  This is where they had all the torture machines.  This one is called the manacles.

 

This is where they stretched you, called the rack.  They also had one where they put you in a small cage all balled up and slowly crushed you to death.  None of these seem pleasant.  The torture was almost exclusively used during interrogation of prisoners.  The bloody tower held some famous prisoners.  One of they was Sir Walter Raleigh.  It was adapted to become a more comfortable residence for Raleigh, his wife, two sons and three servants.  It wasn't originally known as the bloody tower but received that name after the disappearance, and supposed murder, of the sons of King Edward IV.  This has never been proven though.

 

Next we went into the Tower of Armories created around 1652.  It had an unusual exhibition displaying magnificent arms and armor for visitors to enjoy.  By 1692 the horse armory was included.

 

 

This was about the size of AJ and you can see in the left of the picture only a few of the breastplates that were in there.

 

This was a cool dragon - his name was "Keeper"  It is made out of all armor parts and other things that represented things found in the tower.

 

 

Here the kids were able to have a little bit of fun!  It was a hands on part of the museum.  Here they were answering questions as to which weapon you would use for which. 

 

All four boys are liking this.  They also had where you could pull a bow and arrow (don't worry they didn't really shoot arrows) and other things.  They had a great time!

  

 

This is Traitors' Gate.  There were many famous prisoners who entered the Tower of London for the last time through the Traitor's Gate.

 

A good view of the London Bridge from the London Tower.

 

Here it looks like they were promoting one of them.  After our three hours of walking around, all of us were a little bit hungry.

 

 

The boys decided to have traditional fish and chips.  :-)

 

David found his new energy drink - maybe he will be able to fly!  ;-)  After that we caught the bus and heard some more great facts.

 

There are two of these Sphinx statues.  There were supposed to be facing the opposite direction but they left them that way, they were built wrong and nobody changed them.

 

We wore this kid out again - poor thing.  I think it was a really bad time for him to hit a growth spurt. 

 

But he got a little bit of sleep on the bus and on his Dad and then ...

 

he was dancing in the streets!!!  We were on Regents street where the big NFL event was happening.

 

They shut down block after block for this big party!!

 

It had many different activities that children and adults alike could do.  Here Michael is kicking the football.  It was really crazy there.  I thought I was going to lose the boys in the crowds.

 

This is the super bowl trophy.  David still thinks we need this in Seattle.  :-)

 

 

Michael and Daddy just chilling. 

 

 

For our last stop we headed down to where the Sherlock Holmes museum was.  We didn't have time to go in, but liked the statue of him.

 

The boys having fun on the ride back to the hotel on the tube.

 

The boys enjoying their last night together playing a few electronics.  It was so nice to travel with friends, not just for the boys, but for us also!!!

 

The next morning we had to get up early to make our Chunnel ticket.  We saw a beautiful sunrise on the way!!!  We didn't realize that our GPS didn't have London maps, so we had to go back to old school and use a real map.  Thank goodness we did a good job and made it on time.  It was another fantastic trip and a place that we both want to go back to.  One thing that was really nice was they all spoke English and they were genuinely nice, friendly and helpful!