Tower of London

Our group made a visit to The Tower of London. It was a really rainy day and miserably cold... but I stayed positive and tried to make the most of our visit. My friend Sarah and I tagged along on a group tour and ending up learning more than I would have by walking around. The Tower of London (the white tower) is the original Tower and has always been a palace, never a torture chamber like some believe. Building surrounding the tower were later added and used for prisoners and punishment. They now hold the crown jewels, armor, guns and cannons. It was really neat to see. The crowned jewels were amazing--no pictures were allowed. But, I did see the largest diamond in the world weighing in at a whopping 503 carats! Yes huge. They actually had a 3,000+ carat diamond, but to get the clarity and color they cut it into 9 diamonds and the 503 carat diamond was the biggest out of the nine. It was really cool to see on display while taking a horizontal escalator to move across all the jewels. I thought the "people mover" was funny!

The original Tower of London--The White Tower

Me with the tour guide (we tagged along on his tour, sneaky)

The monument in place for where Ann Bolen was beheaded

Graffiti dated back to the 1600's (sorry kind of blurry)

Guns and Cannons

Me with the 7 pound leg armor (it was heavy for leggings)

London Bridge -- London calling!

Sarah and Me

Me on the London Bridge! It was so so cold and I didn't think my umbrella was going to make it!

Sarah and Me on the London Bridge... did I mention freezing!