It Rains in London...?

July 24th, 2015

It rained today. A lot. When we first checked the weather, it said a light rain all day. Apparently this means something entirely different in London because it was a steady, down pouring of rain that never let up. And it was about 50 degrees.

We began the morning by heading to the Westminster Abbey. We have seen quite a few churches, so by this point we are feeling a bit done with touring them, but it was interesting to be able to actually see where events through time and that we have seen on television have occurred. We could picture royal weddings and coronations taking place on the massive alter. This church also has the tombs or memorial plaques of many people, including royalty but also many authors and poets.

We then made our way to the Tower of London. Soaking wet from rain and cold, we decided to take a tour from a Yeoman Warder (or Beefeater) so we could spend some time inside and learn a bit about the area. Of course, because of the rain the tour was shortened and could only take place inside so we did not get to see as much of the fortress. Unfortunately, the line to see the Crown Jewels was incredibly long so we decided this was something we could skip. We headed to the White Tower instead to see the armor displayed. We also walked through the Torture Tower and learned about the ways they would torture prisoners.  Not a time that either of us wanted to live in…

By this point, we (mostly Anna) were cold and tired of being outside, so we headed for the Beefeater Gin Distillery tour. After enjoying the end of tour gin and tonic, we realized that the rain was not going to let up so we did a bit of research and found out the British Museum had late hours. We made our way there and after Anna dried off a bit, we began to visit the rooms we were unable to finish. We saw the Lewis Chessman, Samurai armor, and many other artifacts.