England: the Tower of London

The Tower of London is notorious as a political prison and site of torture and execution.  It has been repurposed several times over the course of its existence and now is the secure site for the crown jewels. Clearly, a place that is full of sparkly stuff and potentially ghosts was one that we needed to visit. Plus they had baboons

Using Laura's handy guidebook we sneakily avoided the lines and entered the tower via the moat. Apparently the moat was the main problem with the whole tower situation. Apparently the tower was built as a royal fortress but whoever was responsible for the moat botched it. So the royal people decided to relocate to somewhere less stinky. The moat still played an important role in defending the fortress and in housing the royal polar bears. 

We proceeded on directly to the royal jewels which were super cool. I was worried since we had already seen the Vatican jewels and the jewels in Cologne that the British crown jewels would not live up to my hopes. I mean Rome ruled the known world for far longer than the British Empire was a big deal so their treasures should be better, right? Well, Rome may have the corner on old art but the crown jewels definitely win on the big and shiny front. These were enormous shiny expensive things. Seriously. Many of  the diamonds in the royal regelia were cut from the >3,000 carat Cullinan Diamond. The largest chunk was the 530 carat diamond stuck in the end of the sceptre there were man other chunks varying in size all the way down to the tiny 4.4 carat chunk mounted in a ring. To give some perspective the diamond on your average engagement ring (well nation wide average, you probably only have a sample size of 1 so your average is pretty much whatever size your ring is) is between 0.5 and 1 carats. These rocks were massive and they are surrounded by gold and platinum and other fancy shiny things. And there were multiples, there were like 4 crowns and tons of swords and robes and rings. 

After staring at all of the jewels we went on a tour with a friendly beefeater. Beefeaters are the guards of the Tower of London. They wear funny outfits. They are also all almost retired military doing their last post surrounded by thousands of tourists from around the world. Ours was highly entertaining. He told us about the history of the tower and pointed out what the different buildings were and stories about the people associated with the different areas of the grounds. Apparently traitor's gate was originally trader's gate because that is where they would deliver the supplies for the tower, but because it was more secure to deliver important prisoners by boat the gate adopted the similar sounding designation for it's less frequent import. Our Beefeater's commentary on the chapel in the tower was also highly entertaining. Essentially, he pointed out the irony of having a wedding over the graves of two queens who were executed for unfaithfulness. He had a point. 

After out tour we went walking around to see the walls accosted in the peasant's revolt, the bloody tower famous in Richard III (less exciting than one might think, the other prison rooms with graffiti from the Elizabethan era were much cooler), and the white tower. We tried to go see the royal beasts but that area was closed off so we had to content ourselves with the impressive sculptures around the grounds. The White Tower housed the really old royal chambers, living in a castle looked fairly uncomfortable. It was also the home of the armor exhibit, my favorite were the giant set of armor for some one about 7 feet tall and some of the really big 3 handed swords. It also had a bunch of first edition firearms including a hand machine gun. I know this is essentially an uzi but I still think that a gold plated one with cooling vents on the barrel looks either very cool or very ridiculous. There was also a cool dragon sculpture made out of stuff representing the different departments housed in the tower over the centuries. The most unexpected ones were royal observatory and cartography office. 

We finished up our tour with some lovely views of tower bridge and a deeper appreciation for the British and their collection of shiny things.