You shall to the tower

Alright, so we finally reached one of the biggest icons of London.  We're talking about Friday, and we're talking about the Tower of London.  No joke, I was pretty stoked about this.  I think I was more excited for the Tower of London than I was for St. Paul's.  Yeah, really really excited.  I'd been looking forward to this ever since learning that I would be going to England.  Yup, this is going to be a big day.

The thing is, the Tower of London is all about history, and I love history.  And the more I learn about English history the more that I want to know.  Yeah, so if I'm geeking out (as Amy would say) or having a nerd moment (Tara supplied that phrase tonight) or basically being weird and getting excited about ridiculous stuff, you have my full permission to skip the majority of this post.  Because usually that would be quite unacceptable.

Yeah, that's me in front of the White Tower.  I went in there.

Anyway, basically the first thing that we did was go to see the Crown Jewels.  That means the Star of Africa and the Second Star of Africa and crowns and scepters and those nifty little balls that they hold in either their right or left hand to symbolize something important during a coronation (we had a few signs and picture contradicting each other on that one) and tons and tons of gold platters and the biggest golden punch bowl with an enormous ladle.  It was really neat.  I kept having to remind myself that all of those sparkling gems that are throwing off colors in all directions are real diamonds and not fakes.  That's about the time that your head starts spinning.  The crown jewels are priceless you know?  Like seriously priceless because although you probably could set a price on the actual gems (an enormously high price) it's impossible to put a price on both the gems and the historical value.  Mmm hmm.

Yeah, so then we took a tour with one of the beefeaters.  He basically walked us around all the towers and explained the history of them (lots of "in this tower so-and-so was kept a prisoner.  This is how they died.") which was really cool.  I guess that I hadn't fully understood that being kept prisoner in the Tower wasn't simply just one little block of places that you were kept prisoner in.  Could be any number of towers.  Our tour guide/beefeater was SUPER entertaining.  Kept making cracks about America and France and Australia.  Oh, and he kind of sort of flirted with me.  He was talking about one of the illegitimate sons of King Charles II and mentioning how he was young and handsome.  Then he says, "rather like me you know" and he totally winks, smiles, and blows a kiss at me.  Eye contact and stuff you know.  It was pretty hilarious.  (Especially when you consider that as a beefeater, he has 18 years or army experience and was a sergeant at one point and all that jazz.  Just making comments and stuff for fun.  HILARIOUS.)

We went into the chapel on our tour where Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Jane Grey are buried, which was like ultra geek out moment.  Then we wandered through several of the towers, getting some awesome pictures of both Tower Bridge and the White Tower along the way.

I'm on the Tower of London and Tower Bridge is behind me.  It was a really surreal moment.

 Anyway, it started to rain on us, so we tried to find a way down to find food.  It was nigh unto impossible, so we randomly walked through several tower and exhibitions on random things (for example, crowns through the ages.  More royal crowns!)  We went and grabbed a surprisingly normal-priced lunch from the cafe that they had built in the middle of the courtyard (although we still had to ask for directions from the worker in the gift shop).  I got this baguette with sausage and onion in it and Sydnie and I had fun trying all of the different sauces that they had to put on it.  The best was this tangy sort of yellow sauce and the worst this ultra ultra spicy mustard that I will be happy to never have again.

Next we went into the White Tower (I really couldn't leave until we'd done that) and walked through the collection of armor and swords and jeweled rifles that were there.  It was really really neat.  The White Tower is a Norman structure that's still standing.  Most of the Norman stuff I have seen has been along the lines of, if-you-look-in-this-hole-that's-covered-by-a-piece-of-glass-you-can-see-the-Norman-foundations-of-this-Gothic-cathedral type.  So the fact that we were in a building that was originally Norman and is still standing was really cool.  We walked into the small chapel in the White Tower and it was so clearly rough cut stone and so old that I was in complete awe.

Well, we made it out (through the gift shop) eventually and got distracted for a bit in the gift shop just outside of the tower.  I've been in way too many of these gift shops, so Sydnie and I goofed off for a bit with the stuffed animals and such while Amy did her legitimate shopping.  Then we headed over to Westminster.

BEAUTIFUL roses.  Oh yeah, that building in the background in Westminster.  It looks crooked in the picture, because the flowers are the highlight.

Yeah, I know what you're all thinking.  You're thinking, wait a second Laura, you're already BEEN to Westminster.  That was the whole Evensong thing on Sunday.  Well, yes.  That's what I thought too.  But I was with people who wanted to go, and what I wanted to do most (British Museum) I wouldn't have enough time for before dinner.  So I was like okay, yeah, sure, whatever, let's go take a tour of Westminster.

Okay, um, best decision ever!  I mean, yeah, cool cathedral and stuff except for oh wait!  Here's Queen Elizabeth's grave!  And Mary, Queen of Scots!  And Mary, Queen of England (Bloody Mary).  And oh here's Chaucer's grave.  And Dickens, and Handel, who had 3000 people randomly show up to his small and private funeral, and a million other important writers and stuff (Lewis Carrol anyone?  Livingstone?  Now I'm standing on Woodsworth).  Then we go farther down, and there's Isaac Newton, nice as you please with a wonderful monument and everything.  That was a really really really cool moment for me.  And Darwin's right over there.  Plus there's tons of kings and queens buried all over the place, and the coronation chair where, you know, they've been crowning people since the end of the Battle of Hastings and the Stone of Scone is placed.  (It's in Scotland right now.  Been there, seen that.)  Yeah, it was really neat.

Well, Amy went back to the Center for dinner crew, but Sydnie and I went over to the Saatchi Gallery next.  Homework assignment to run over to the gallery before our final and pick out a piece to analyze and present to the group.  We got lost about three times on our way there (we used the map at the Tube stop, the bus stop, and the bike rental stop before we figured out which direction the museum was actually in, which is, unfortunately, rather typical when Sydnie and I are together in strange areas of cities) but we finally made it!  I really actually loved it a rather lot, which surprised me.  It's full of sculptures and it's all Postmodern art, which I wouldn't think that I'd be inclined to like.  But as we're going back on Monday for our final I'll talk more about that then.