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February 2005

Tower of London

David Aaronson
2005-10-01 21:35:38

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The Tower of London gets its own page, not necessarily because it's that expansive but more because about half our London pictures seem to be of the Tower and its environs (1).

We bought our tickets for the Tower the day before we intended to go, mostly because in our extensive and aimless wandering of the city we ended up here. The ticket sellers told us how smart that was because then we wouldn't have to wait in line the following day, although the following day there weren't exactly huge lines. So maybe that's the way to go in tourist season. All of the sunny pictures, like this one were taken outside the Tower when we were there buying tickets (2). On the actual day of our visit it was gray and overcast.

So here were are inside the Tower. The 'Tower' of course is actually more like a fort or at least a fortified complex. There is a lot to see here, some of it happens to be towers but much of it isn't. Here is Melanie in front of the Traitor's gate which was the way you arrived at the Tower if you were meant to be imprisoned in it (3). It's actually a water gate reachable only by boat.

Inside St. Thomas tower (named after Thomas a Beckett) they've restored the rooms to how they may have looked when Edward I was King and lived here (1272-1307). The throne room is nice, but we were more impressed by the chandelier in this anteroom (4). Nearby is a marker where Henry VI was murdered (more or less). There's a whole lot of '{someone famous} died here' markers around the Tower grounds.

There's a strange assortment of towers and buildings you're allowed into and they don't necessarily connect in any logical way. You have to just wander around entering open doors and you're still likely to miss some exhibits. Some of them, like the torture exhibit you might want to miss. The real torture exhibit would be the staircase ...