The Tower is a famous landmark which most people living
in London take for granted and say that they will visit one day! In all my
years in England, I had never been.
My son and his family were in London, so a visit was essential. I did the booking online as one does not want to risk not getting in….in fact, these days, everything is online including payments. I was horrified to find that nobody accepts cash these days; it’s all by card and God help you if you don’t have one, preferably two cards as one might stop working.
The ticket purchase is complicated as they have milked every opportunity to show the tourist every small element. So, apart from the Tower itself which covers the grounds, you have :
- The famous Crown Jewels (the exhibition totally revamped had opened just the day prior to our visit so we saw all the beauties!)
- The Fusiliers Museum – excellent display of their role in the battlefield.
- The Moat in bloom – a recent innovation of wild flower planting
- The Ravens – unofficial guardians of the tower.
- The White Tower – Norman architecture at its best.
- Line of Kings – the armour of various kings
- The Guards at the Tower march past
- Tower Green and Scaffold site
- Torture and blood galore
- The Battlements and Armoury
- Medieval Palace
There is no way that you can see all these places in one day unless there are no queues and you whizz through each place! A normal person likes to stroll, enjoy the walk and more so, the displays which they have come to see.
The Tower is imposing with its huge walls, its round massively thick walls and round towers rising up into the sky.
We were led into the Castle proper through a narrow
walkway, our entry being vetted by yet another Yeoman.
Yeoman Warder Mr Pryme knows the history backwards. His irreverent wonderful sense of humour is fantastic and he made fun of everybody in the Castle’s past. His explanations of all its past residents and their fate brought alive to us mere mortals what life must have been like in those ghastly days.
It’s a question of the chicken or the egg – which came first? Should you take the tour of the Tower and its main sights first like we did or should you see the heavy duty – heavy queue items like the Crown Jewels first? On reflection, definitely the exhibition queues as the tours are frequent. We joined the queue for the Crown Jewels and I was astonished … it extended into a very long U shape to the opposite end of the exhibition building. Mind you, when we came out afterwards, the queue had extended towards where Mr Pryme had left us – another one hour of queueing time at least.
It took us a
cool 75 minutes before we got entry. In the meantime, my nieces went off to
have an ice cream and see other sights. I went in between to see the super but
small Fusilier’s Museum with very exciting exhibits.
We ended again by the Waterloo Barracks and gradually made our way out walking down the gradient towards the Traitors Gate and exit. As they say, a fine day was had by all. It was fun, it was entertaining, and enlightening --- learning from Mr Pryme and the various exhibits. Yes, seeing the Kohinoor was the icing on the cake as it was not on view for many years.