The Tower of London

June 17th, 1998
Day 4

Aerial view of the Tower of London.

Today we left at 8:00 and went to the Tower of London. We spent all day there. It was really neat. There are a total of 20 towers. There are 13 on the outer wall, 6 on the inner wall, and the main one in the very middle is called the White Tower. All of the royalty lived int he White Tower for a long time. The two walls and the 19 outer towers were all built to protect the White Tower.

We took a guided tour with a Yeoman Warden	.

We saw St. Thomas Moore's room where he was held, and the chapel that they allowed him to pray in.

The most impressive part of the Tower was the Jewel House. All of the crowns, rings and maces (staffs). All of them had hundreds of jewels in them. Even the swords had lots of jewels in them.

The site of the scaffolding where Anne Boleyn was beheaded.

Before we went on our own on the tour, we had a Yeoman Warden take us on a guided tour. He was really good. He really knew his facts. He was talking about how people who were about be executed (by being beheaded) would talk to the crowd before he was beheaded. He said that the longest recorded was 9 1/2 hours. He said, "He really talked his head off."  The Yeoman made lots of funny jokes like that.

The Chapel Royal of St. Peter was very pretty. The organ was huge. The pipes were about 2 feet in diameter.

The solid gold punch bowl in the Jewel House.

Another thing that I really liked in the Jewel House was this gigantic punch bowl. It was pure gold, and it was about 3 feet tall, 5 feet in diameter.  It was really pretty. Mom would have liked it. The ladle was about 6 feet long, pure gold, and the scoop itself was the shape of a seashell nearly a foot in diameter. I was amazed.

On the bus on the way to the tower, we saw thousands of people all dressed alike, all wearing the same clothes, all carrying briefcases, walking exactly the same in the same direction. They looked like they were all programmed, or being drawn by a supernatural force. It looked like something from the twilight zone.

The worst part of the day was that I left my bag with postcards and souvenir books at the cafe we went to for lunch. I felt real bad because Jenelle and Aunt Molly had things in the bag also. I offered to replace them, but they wouldn't let me.

Grandma McGee in the artillery room.

In the Tower, there was the artillery tower, there were hundreds of different types of guns and cannons. I think that the hardest part of shooting the cannons would be putting hte ball in the cannon. Some of the balls were almost 1 1/2 feet in diameter. They are lead, so they would seem like the would be too heavy to lift into the cannons.

The guards outside of the Jewel House.

Today would definitely be the best day so far, except for the pouring rain that we walked through after the Tower. At least it didn't rain while we were touring. It waited until we were done.