London / Tower of London

It was our last day in London when Dad and I went to the infamous Tower of London. My Mum didn't because she was sick with a very bad cold.
My dad thought the Tower of London was a tower, I thought it was a castle, but it was actually the oldest fortress/palace/prison in Europe. The fortress was created by William the Conquerer nearly 1,000 years ago!

It is kind of square-ish in its shape. This is me outside it.The Tower of London actually has a tower in the middle of it, which is the original Tower of London but has been expanded by other Kings and Queens who added battlements, chapels, places to live, stronger walls and in the 1700's a moat was put around it.

The original Tower of London - that was in the middle - had it's construction starting in the 70's...
...The 1070's that is!

We took a tour around the Tower of London with a brilliant and funny Beefeater, who lives there, but a Beefeater's real name is"Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London and Member of the Sovereigns Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraodinary!" Really! This is a Beefeater behind me. At the end he said "For the people who enjoyed this tour, my name is Mark, for those who didn't, my name is Stephen." He taught us a lot about Henry VIII who desperately wanted a son to be the next Heir to the throne - only a son, not a daughter.
He had a wife, who bore him a daughter and she was beheaded at the exact place behind me in this next photo - just in front of the white and black cottage where she lived.There were six people beheaded here - at this special spot inside the grounds - all under orders of Henry VIII. Five of those people were wives of Henry who had bore a daughter or two or no kids at all. He said to each wife when he married "I will love you for the rest of your life." The other one beheaded was a Monarch who annoyed Henry too much. In the end, Henry VIII had 13 children and his wife (at the time) had none.

This famous tourist attraction has 2,500,000 visitors per year!

After the tour we went to the armoury to see all the weapons dispayed there.
















We also read about Guido Fawkes or Guy Fawkes as you might know him. He did some hard time - tortured - and was hanged, drawn and quartered for his involvement in the famous Gun Powder plot. That was a plot in 1605 to blow up the Houses of Parliament with all the Ministers and the King and Queen inside. In the end, the 5th of November became Guy Fawkes Night, celebrated with bon fires and crackers for almost 400 years since.

I nearly forgot to mention that on the way here we saw remainders of the war like these.
They were the places the bullet shells went into.