Tower of London

Today we attended the Tower of London and spent a couple hours roaming the grounds, observing all the artifacts that are kept there.  We saw the royal jewels, ancient armors and weapons, and of course the torture room. While the torture room was very disturbing and creepy, I found it amusing how casually people observe it today as a tourist attraction. While I was in there, I overheard one of the tour guides say that the royals didn’t use the room that often and when they did it was typically to get information out of someone. She then explained the uses of each machine. There was a metal circle that was used for squeezing people, a rack used for hanging people by their wrists while their organs were drawn from their stomachs, and a wooden bed where they would stretch people by their limbs, “Not very nice.” I didn’t read much about the people that were famously imprisoned there, but what I did see was that in 1360 King John II of France, while imprisoned at the Tower, visits the Lions and gives 20 shillings to the Lion Keeper. I didn’t learn much else about him but I know that he was nicknamed “the good king” so it was probably a pretty big bummer that he was imprisoned but you know if he had the lion keeper on his side he probably had it better than some. The real tragic prisoners in my opinion were the ravens. There were around 10 ravens hopping around the yard at the tower who had all had one of their wings clipped, damning them to hop around the tower for the rest of their lives. This was part of a tradition that was hundreds of years old led by the superstition that when the ravens leave, the kingdom will fall.