London – Tower of London

After Saturday's whirlwind tour of everything and anything we decided to take it a bit slower on Sunday. We started with Mass for the first Sunday of Advent at Westminster Cathedral which was very majestic. After Mass we looked around a little and found the gift shop where I bought a Nativity which is perfect for travelling with. 

Westminster Cathedral

Look Alice - I kept baby Jesus out!

Then we headed to our destination for the day: The Tower of London.

Here we have Hisham demonstrating for me how to use the archery windows

The juxtaposition between new and old. The building in the background is colloquially known as the Shard.

Model of the tower. If the Queen was to decide tomorrow she wanted to live there, she would have to live in that small cottage in the back corner - which is furnished like any ordinary house.

We found a guard to pose with!

Poor guy. There were people all day lining up to take photos of him and all he could do was stand there. 

This guy was actually one of the guards guarding the Crown Jewels. We then went into the exhibition of the jewels and met Dan the Royal Jewels Guard. Hisham had been asking me royal-themed questions all morning and I hadn't been able to answer any but Dan chatted with us for a solid half hour at least and answered every single one. We are big White Collar fans which is a show about a professional art thief so we very much felt like we were on the set of the show. Dan was telling us that there was a ton of security in the room and even though we couldn't see it didn't mean it was there (obvs.). I was imagining alarms blaring, walls appearing out of nowhere, confusing smoke (for some reason??), laser beams and shouting guards. Too much TV watching for me. What we were met with was a lovely quiet atmosphere, smooth travelators and the world's biggest clear cut diamond in the Queen's sceptre. Definitely a sight to behold! Here's a sneaky forbidden shot I got of some king-or-other's stick and hats. Spectacular.

A sneaky pic of some of the Crown Jewels

Fun fact: the Crown Jewels can't be taken out of the country (empire? commonwealth? I can't remember the right word), so when the last king went to India to become sovereign officially, they had to make a whole new crown for him. Ok yes I mixed up every single fact in that story, but the point is that they can't be taken anywhere willy-nilly and I was impressed by that. Anybody care to correct the story for me?

The money shot

Feeding the ravens

We hung outside for a bit and soaked up the royal palatial atmosphere while Adam had fun watching the ravens, and then headed down to the river for a bit of a cruise. We hopped off at the London Eye which we were planning to ride, but after a frantic and frazzled few minutes trying to sort out the zillion things that had to happen right at that moment (Adam wees, me food, the freezing cold, jet lag), we decided it would be better to go home and rest and leave that activity for the next day.

In London baby

Water!

The elusive Eye

The bridge from another angle. We're tourists and proud of it.

I have four cousins living in London (five now, hey Simon) and a surprising four out of the five of us were able to meet up that Sunday evening. We all were living/staying within about 10 minutes of each other by tube so they conveniently came to my station (thanks guys) and we had a really lovely catch up which lasted late into the night. Unfortunately nobody thought to take a photo to celebrate the momentous event so I present you this pretty tree instead:

Taken at about 1pm at the Tower of London. See how low the sun is? It never really got much higher in the sky at all. Northern winter!

Expect more thrilling tales tomorrow...