We went to the Tower of London today. I probably wouldn't recommend it, not for the £14.50 entry fee anyway. You get a short guided tour,
which was good, but only lasted about 50 minutes. After that, pretty much all you could do is watch these performers re-enacting the life
of Lord Nelson (who defeated the Spanish and French in the Battle of Trafalgar) or see the crown jewels (which were nice, but you couldn't
take pictures of them...). One cool thing about the jewels is that they're in this special room, with these two giant doors that shut
if the glass in any of the display cases is broken. It means you'd be able to touch the jewels if you broke the glass, but then
all you could do is sit and wait for the guards to come and get you.
There's a lot of Ravens around the Tower of London, and the story goes that if the ravens ever left the tower, it would come crumbling down. Now, the English are a superstitious lot, so they actually keep the ravens caged at night, and their wings are clipped so they can't fly away. I guess the only problem would be a fox or if some bird-disease came and killed them all...
By the time we left, it was pouring rain so we had to buy these funny little plastic bag-looking ponchos so we wouldn't get wet. We met our cousins quite by accident at a souvenier shop near the tower - they had just arrived in London for the day and were going around on that bus tour we had been on. It was quite a surprise!