Walking in Sunlight: Tower of London

As hard as it is to believe, it took almost two years of living in the UK for me to make it to the Tower of London. Since I don't actually live in London that makes it a bit more difficult to visit all of those tourist sites, plus I went to all of the free/inexpensive ones first :)

But, since I'm almost out of time to gallivant around, I decided to take a day off a few weeks ago and go visit this iconic piece of history. The Tower is about as British as British gets - it's history goes all the way back to 1066.

Included with admission is a "free" tour by a Yeoman Warder, often called a Beefeater. They actually live within the palace walls. The tour was full of interesting tidbits - lots of prisoners were held here and there was a lot of political intrigue withing the walls.

We got to see the guards change. I bet those hats are cumbersome.

Ruins of the old wall. The real attraction is the raven on the left. There are six ravens at the Tower. Legend has is that if they ever leave the empire will die. These ravens are very well taken care of.

Cool round tower.

Home of the crown jewels. They were pretty sparkly.

King Henry VIII's armour. I don't think I'd like to meet up with him on a battlefield.

The Norman Chapel.

They had lots of interactive displays. Since some of the prisoners were her because they were Catholic during the Protestant reign or vice-versa there was a place where you could vote on "How far would you go for your beliefs?" Sadly, the "They don't really matter" choice far outscored the "I'd die for my beliefs" choice.