Ravens, Towers, and Beasts!

These past few days in London have been so so special! After a long day of travel, bag issues, delayed flights, and trauma bonding, we finally arrived at our flats!

Thursday morning we started our first tour of The Tower of London. We started by entering the Crown Jewels section which is home to a collection of 23,578 gemstones that are part of the Royal Collection and still used in royal ceremonies today. The exhibit features pieces such as coronation dresses, royal staffs, dining sets and so much more. My absolute favorite part was Queen Camilla’s coronation robe, it was a gold cloak covered with hand stitched colorful jewels in the shape of flowers- it also had a matching bejeweled sword (I’ll try to find a picture online since we weren’t allowed to take pictures in there.)

After we left the Crown Jewels exhibit we went up towards the outside of the tower which they called the “wild beasts” area. We learned that the tower was once home to a bunch of beasts that were given to the royal family as gifts. The most common kind being Lions. There were a lot of really interesting facts like how the king once had a polar bear he attached to a leash and let it go in the river on it to fish. Overall though it doesn’t really seem that the animals were cared for well at the tower and eventually left and joined the now London zoo in 1861!

Afterwards, Milly and Thatcher went and explored the bloody tower which might have been my favorite area in the tower. We got to see some ravens who were literally the size of chickens and I even got a video of one squawking! The Bloody Tower was where famous poet Sir Walter Raleigh’s study resided. He was one of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, who was known for playing a leading part in the English colonisation of North America. He was actually such a “high class” prisoner that he even had his own garden and servants. The Tower is also home to a murder mystery (which was perfect to learn of right before seeing MouseTrap in the evening.) The supposed murder is of the 12-year-old Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, in 1483. Tradition says that they stayed in these rooms on the orders of their uncle, the future Richard III, until one night when they disappeared. The prince’s disappearance remains one of the most intriguing stories of the Tower’s history. The rumours are actually why the tower was renamed the ‘Bloody Tower’ from the Garden Tower.

Finally we went to the White Tower where they had a bunch of armour on display, the best part though was this absolutely gorgeous chapel.

I think the most interesting thing I’ve learned so far about the British culture is just how royal everything is LOL. Monarchies are so interesting to me and it was really cool to see how that all worked and shaped the society in the UK.

We ended this packed day with seeing our first show on the West End, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, which was such a funny and perfect murder mystery to end the night!