England 2023: Tower of London & Kensington Palace Day 4

June 7, 2023

Dear Adventure Avenue,

We started the day off with breakfast in the hotel. Then we went to the underground where we got on the tube for a very long time. Only for the train to terminate and to realize we were not only at the wrong station, but we were also nowhere near the Tower of London. I checked Citymapper (a helpful app but really study it cuz it can still be confusing). Then we got back on track and made it to Tower Hill (the correct station) and used our pre-bought tickets at the base of the moat bridge.

Tower of London

The beefeaters tour (included with your ticket) had already started, so as we walked in we joined one that was in progress but at the beginning.

I highly recommend doing it as it gives you a good background history of the castle.

The tower has served as a sort of zoo or menagerie, but all the animals were causing problems – like injuring and killing people type of problems, so they were moved to the “new” London zoo.

This torture device reminded me of the stretching table in the Princess Birde

The highlight was definitely the Crown Jewels, but you can’t take photos in there.

The white tower (the big square building in the center) housed the armory. I would recommend if you don’t find armor or canons interesting and have trouble walking up A LOT of stairs that you skip this part.

I liked seeing the medieval toilet here.

For lunch we ate at the cafe. We got the bratwurst, hot dog, and ham and cheese croissant. I think the hot dog though was just 2 little sausages (like breakfast sausages) so my brother and I switched. I loaded mine up with what probably turned out to be too much kraut.

I found Edward I’s bedchamber in the St. Thomas’ tower to be interesting.

We saw Tower Bridge from the ramparts of the castle and at the exit.

I think the only thing we didn’t see was the Mint, but by the end we were growing tired and we wanted to get back to the room to drop some stuff off and change clothes as it was a much warmer day.

Kensington Palace

We also needed to get back near our hotel because we had tickets for Kensington Palace at 3:30. We ended up getting there at 3:40.

There was another exhibit being hosted there called Crown to Couture.

Most people seemed to like it as normally there wouldn’t be that much to see at Kensington Palace.

I however wasn’t all that fond of the exhibit- with the Blake Lively dress as the exception because it was mostly American celebrities that I don’t really like all that much. Now had they thrown in something Star Wars, I’d of been all in.

As it was, the Queen Victoria part of the house was my favorite part. She’d grown up in the house and was in fact born there.

They’d found some of her toys in the basement and put the dollhouse on display.

She had a very lonely childhood as her mother and Conroy wanted to seize her power by becoming her regent after Victoria’s uncle had died before she turned 18. Luckily for her, he died a few weeks after she had turned 18 and she became Queen.

After finishing up at Kensington, we headed back to the hotel for some rest. We ended up eating dinner in the hotel. My mom and I split a club sandwich that had an egg salad base. It was surprisingly good.