Tours- Tower of London

Here we go again, this time with a little bit more information. Yesterday, we got up and had a coach tour with a guide by the name of Angie.  She had a sharp accent and was a good tour guide and had the "Blue Badge" title.  We saw some really cool things with on the coach tour.  Kind of gave us a large picture view of most of the city.  We saw things such as Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, financial district, etc.  We had two stops, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards.  Both places were fantastic sites to see that we will undoubtedly go back to visit.  

This is the group of guys that is with us on the journey over here in front of Westminster Abbey.  

 The detail in the Abbey's architecture is unbelievable, such fine details.

Buckingham Palace

 This is a video of the march of the guards from Buckingham Palace to the barracks, where the actual change occurs so that the old guards can go.  They are still on active duty while in barracks, and they sit there with rifles in hand in case of emergency.  So, it is not until they are completely relived of duty can they rest, which is after 24 hours of active duty.  They then get 48 hours off.

After that we came back to our flat and went to a local food place to grab something to eat.  Outside the place they market "Fish and Chips" however when we got into the place, there was no fish and chips offered. Quite disappointing, but, the food was actually pretty good.  Anyways, we hustle back to the flat, where we now had a walking tour of Kensington, the area of London we actually live in.  This tour was given by a man named Duncan Duff, probably the best thing we have done since being here.  He is also a "Blue Badge" tour guide(which means they have to pass a really hard test after taking history classes on London for 6 straight months) and was the best tour guide ever.  We soon learned that he is a British actor and quite famous one at that.  He took us all over Kensington and was very informative.  We started out and walked north on Queensgate until we reached Imperial College.  Interesting fact about Imperial College is that it is nationally ranked in academics among Harvard and Oxford and other top ones we hear about.  I mistakenly thought it was more of a state school.  Anyways, we learned a lot about the college which is huge into Engineering and Science/technology.   Queen Victoria's husband was Prince Albert, who was huge into those subjects and did a lot to help build the college.  Because he was a huge influence into the college there was a small memorial built to him in the college court yard. 

The building behind him is the Royal Albert Hall, which is a theater that has all sorts of shows ranging from operas to circus', which is going on right now.  Right behind me as I take this picture is the famous Royal Hall of Music, which is famous for producing musicians and looks like this,

We continued our tour north and beyond the Royal Albert Hall where we were immediately greeted by the real tribute to Prince Albert.  This was one of the better monuments I have ever seen.  Albert was a great husband and raised 8 kids with Victoria and was very famous among the British and this is their tribute to him.

Along with the monument to Albert, there are numerous different sculptures, such as the second picture, all over the entire piece of art.  

 We continued to walk north and headed more northwest to Kensington Gardens which is much like Central Park in New York.  Huge open areas with tons of people, dogs, bikes, children. etc.

From here we continued to walk west where we ran into Kensington Palace, the site of Princess Diana's house.  It is huge but we didn't get to see anything inside of it or anything.  

ignore the couple in the second picture, it was illegal to snap a picture on this private street and I did it without seeing the couple, but the point is to look how big the Palace is.

From here we walked more south and ended up on High Street Kensington.  On the way, we saw St. Marys Abbott Church, which has the highest steeple in London right now.  The church is in a really small area way off the main road.  

On our way back, we saw the original part of Kensington probably built in 1680 seen above.  This concluded our tour with Duncan, sadly.  He was great and very informative.

 Last night we went out to a local Pub for some good local food.  I had Bangers and mash which is local here and delicious.  We stayed there and enjoyed some local brews as well!

Came home early and talked with mom and dad for the first time since I have been here.  Good to talk to them.  

Today we woke up and took the tube, Circle line, from South Kensington east to Tower Hill.  This is where we saw the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge.  Both of these were fantastic things to see.

We didn't to go on the Tower Bridge yet, but we got a really cool tour of the Tower of London, which is the oldest castle in London.  Most of it was founded about 1250.  We went inside the gates and were greeted by a "Beefeater" which is a man who lives in the castle has served at least 22 years in the army.  They knew all about the entire castle.

This is our Beefeater!

There was a lot of history that can't be explain through this blog but I did take some good pictures that I will label to give you the best idea of what some of the things were like.

Old school Catapult that was used in defense.

This is a another line of defense that is used to keep enemies out.  Along with a huge moat, the figure you see in the left of the picture surrounds the castle and than there is some 50 feet until the actual castle begins.  

Open court yards of the castle. Very green grass

Biggest building in the castle! All the gems and artifacts of the past are now currently in this building.

Where Queen Victoria used to live when needed.  Notice the blue doors, that was the queens favorite color, lots of things in London are Victoria blue.

Live guy! Guarding the gems inside the building.

This is a prisoners room.  Actually, there were many prisoners held in this room.  These scratches in the wall are most of the last words these prisoners said.  Some of them have been translated and such and are pretty sad stuff.

St. John's Chapel which is located within the Castle walls.

Gun powder from long long ago.

Cannon.

Libbie and I inside the castle walls.

Hope you enjoyed this, lots of things that words can not explain.

Cheers,

Jimmy