Tower of London - spies, secrets, and torture, oh my!

Tower of London - where the Queen used to live, the Crown Jewels are held and proudly shown off (some maybe have been 'gifted' from India.....taken.), spies were tortured and kept, carvings left by said spies, words of wisdom, and tally marks counting the days. Now it's a memorial to the Royal History of the Royal family. I loved the video of Queen Elizabeth and her Royal Coronation. She was so young! There were uniforms worn by Prince Henry and Prince William and his lovely wife - Kate.

 Is it even possible to lift this??

 curse you tiny cannon....haha (ever seen Despicable Me?)

 It was hard to take clean shots without getting one or two of our friends in every photo.

 I thought this was really cool - each of these horses belonged a King of England.

 and the name of the King above on the flag

 The water closet/loo/bathroom/hole in the bench that goes straight down about 3 levels. ew.

 light reading?

 OW!

 His name is Keeper

 To the Armory

 Here's the torture dungeon:

 These 2 individuals just sat and chatted in old English about whatever she was talking about - he mostly grunted and said 'that's too bad'. haha!

 Tower Bridge and the wall right in front is Traitors Gate

 protecting the castle - that's my 'war' face.

 Jeff is ready for battle!

 We walked across this walkway from one tower to the next - there was an audio playing of battle sounds - scary to be in battle. And you couldn't be very tall.

 See that big group of people?? They're waiting to see the Crown Jewels. We left and came back another day early in the morning to avoid the line. Off to Tower Bridge!

to the Bus - watch out London!

 The tour was COLD! We sat on the open top just behind the last covered seat as we could still take pictures and still be covered. We brought our own headphones to listen to the pre-recorded audio guide. Not bad. Can't remember any of it, but here's some really great pictures. :)

  

tallest building in London

 It was so impressive the amount of people walking and hurrying about. The architecture and everything was just amazing to us small town country kids. :)

 O Canada!

 Beatles of course.

 Waldorf Hotel

 The amount of buses everywhere was crazy! These aren't the tour buses either, this is public transportation. This was just in front of us, there were at least 5 more visible behind us.

 St. Pauls Cathedral was beautiful! The famous Whispering gallery was pretty cool - although slightly terrifying for me on the worn down path, WAY up high in the dome. The dome seen above is not the actual dome seen inside the church. Do some fact checking it's an incredible building. Construction was being done on the inside of the dome so we couldn't go any higher.....and no pictures inside. That this building even still exists is a miracle. 

source : The iconic St Paul's Survives taken on 29 December 1940 of St Paul's during The Blitz

 waiting to hop-on another tour bus after St Pauls Cathedral

Approaching Tower Bridge - not to be confused with London Bridge.

 Looking back to the Tower Bridge from the Tower of London

 More on these sites in the next post - this was just what we saw from the bus. I tried to find more picture of our sites in London, but a lot were not to be photographed and we spend a lot of time walking and taking the underground....one time went all the way out to the Imperial War museum that was closed until July - he told us we could come back then.....not so much. There was more stuff we should have planned to go see and because I had cost us dearly on the train tickets to get to London, we gave up visits to Bath, Stonehenge, other sites outside of London. I'm actually okay with that though - those sites were stressing me out before we even left for Europe. Although there was a plane museum I would have like to have gone too, but didn't know about until we arrived at the Imperial war museum and the guide said it would be an all-day trip. We only had a few hours the next day.