April 14, 2012

This morning I got up at 7:30 and had a chocolate croissant and yogurt for breakfast. At 9:30 Erin and I met up and we took a bus to the Tower of London. The first thing we did once inside was see the Crown Jewels. The collection is incredible! There were maces, a Coronation spoon, dishes for a feast after Coronations, all of solid gold of course and there were absolutely beautiful crowns and jewels (and crowns filled with jewels). After the Jewels (where unfortunately pictures weren’t allowed) we took a tour from a Yeoman Warden, also called a Beefeater Tour. There were a lot of people on the tour, but it was really funny and very fun to go on. After the tour we went into White Tower and Bloody Tower (where prisoners such as Sir Walter Raleigh were kept). The White Tower was the main center and had a lot of armor in it, some from King Henry VIII. It also had some gifts from foreign rulers there, such as a headdress from America. After we walked around on the walls a bit then decided to get food, and had fish & chips. After our good lunch we continued working our way around to the building and after we finished looking around we walked to London Bridge and across it to get to the Tube. We then took the Tube to Regent’s Park, where we then caught a bus to take us closer to the side with London Zoo on it. It’s good we didn’t have a car, as car parking was £14.50.  Tickets were expensive already at £20.

The zoo was really fun though, we saw all sorts of animals: lions, and tigers (no bears) but monkeys, gorillas, giraffes, donkeys, and more! It was really fun. One of my favorite places was an exhibit where there were monkeys (squirrel monkeys I think) and they could jump all around and you could walk around a path. Unfortunately they bite so you can’t play with them but it was cool they could do what they wanted and you could just watch and see them a bit. We also saw penguins and the reptile house, including where one of the Harry Potter scenes was filmed!

Overall it was a really long but good day and we got back to Nido a little before 7 and I was exhausted.