Today was another day full of history and exploring. We hit the Tower of London fairly early and got in before a lot of crowd. The Tower is actually the collective name for a big medieval fortress.
This is the actual Tower. It is the oldest structure in the fortress and was completed in 1078 – 11 years after William the Conquer invaded to provide him a safe refuge in his newly conquered land.

Within the fortress-

that used to have a moat and everything. It was really cool to walk around a fortress built in 1200 (even if most of it was reconstructed).

From the wall of the Tower of London!

Of course, we had to go see the Crown Jewels. Pictures weren’t allowed, but I can tell you that those are quite the sparkly collection of massive jewels. Tour group after tour group kept coming through by the time we got to the jewels themselves (the building they’re in is set up to shuffle thousands of people past in a day and has quite the winding lead-up) so we got pushed through some of the collections of oversized gold plates and ceremonial pieces.

The rest of the Tower was a lot of walking around looking at old buildings, weapons, and armor. The Tower itself is actually the longest running visitor attraction in the world!
My favorite part was the dragon.

After snapping a picture of a the iconic guard (who was about my age), we hopped on the bus one last time and rode around the city again. We blasted past Piccadilly on our way around too.

But once again didn’t make it to Buckingham Palace.

By that point we were wiped out so we struggled through rush hour on the Tube and headed for home.

Sidenote: Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) isn’t going to work out. The whole day would cost upwards of 200 pounds, you’re not allowed to take pictures, and it isn’t open on Fridays and Saturdays. So Mom and I toured via the website gallery. It’s pretty.