Tower of London

Today Kevin and I went to the Towers of London! It is crazy how much history is packed into one facility! Even from the information we got from the tour and the signs around the royal grounds, I had to do my own research to make sense of this place. I don't even know how to start there is just so that happened and so many Monarchs that walked through the halls of the Tower!

The building includes an outer-wall, inner-wall and finally the main tower itself (also referred to as a castle in some cases) So now, I figure the best way to discuss everything the Towers has to offer is to break it down by building/exhibitions

The White Tower

The White Tower was the only piece to this royal ground when William the Conquerer first began building it around 1080. The additions to the facility began almost 150 years later until eventually there were 21 towers in total.
This became the official "home" of the Royal family from the time it was built until the very beginning of 1600. It was the home to  King Richard II and III, King Henry VI and VII, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Mary I, and so many more! They lived on the 2nd floor of the tower, there was a banquet hall  and st. john's chapel on the 1st floor, kitchen and the servants lived on the first floor and the basement was used as a dungeon at one point, and later as a wine cellar!
Today, the White Castle holds some of the previous Royal family's collectibles such as their armor, swords and guns. For more information on the White Towers (and trust me, there is a lot of history in just this building alone!) here are some links: White Tower 1, White Tower 2

Armor

St. John's Chapel

The Bloody Tower

This tower was used frequently to hold some of the state's prisioners. Its original name was the Garden Tower, but its name was later changed after the multiple gruesome deaths that took place in just this tower. It is famous for the deaths of the two young princes, Edward V and his brother Richard the Duke of York, who were around the ages of 9 and 12 at the time of their death. They were living in the Garden Tower when the mysteriously disappeared, and not found until hundreds of years later during restoration work on the White Tower. It was also the tower that imprisioned Henry Pearcy, Sir Thomas Overbury, multiple bishops and archbishops and was the site of Henry VI's death.  Links to more information about the Bloody Tower and those associated with it: The Princes in the Tower, The Bloody Tower

The Green

This spot was commonly used for the beheading of prisioners. If you were beheaded here and not in front of the public it was to prevent bad publicity. Others prisioners were taken to another location, right outside the towers to be executed for the public eye. There have been 3 Queens that were executed on this spot as well: Queen Anne Boleyn (wife of Henry VIII), Queen Katharine Howard (also the wife of Henry VIII), and Lady Jane Grey (who was only Queen for 3 days or something very short). Several others have been executed on this spot as well. More information: Tower Green 1, Tower Green 2

East Wall

The east wall is composed of several towers: Salt Tower, Broad Arrow Tower, Constable Tower, Martin Tower, & Bowyer Tower. There really wasn't much on these towers, but they have all held prisioners - some have even left their engravings on the walls of these towers. They were all also essential in the defense of the grounds and the Royal family. 

Chapel of St. Peter and Vincula

I was unable to take pictures in the chapel (it is actually a federal crime, so it wasn't worth the risk.... unless the guard was teasing me, but I have a feeling he wasn't.) It is said to be the 2nd most important church in England, following Westminster. Beneath the chapel is the burial place for majority of those executed at the Towers - when Queen Victoria had the chapel renovated and asked that the floor be leveled, they found close to 1,500 behead skeletons beneath the old floors!! Some of the bodies beneath the chapel included the 3 Queens that were executed on the green, 2 Roman Catholic Saints, and many others! More info: Chapel 1, Chapel 2

The Crown Jewels
I can know say I have seen the worlds 2nd largest diamond. It is 530 carrots and is about the size of my palm. If you can't grasp that, then just trust me, its HUGE. The Tower of London is home to what appeared to be all the jewels that England uses for the coronation of their Kings and Queens. However, all these jewels are much younger then the towers themselves! After the civil war and the execution of King Charles I in 1649, all crowns and symbols of the monarchy were destroyed. After peace had restored and Charles II was invited back into England, a new line of crown jewels had to be made. It is these jewels and the ones made thereafter that are now on display here! I wasn't able to take any pictures of these jewels, but I found a few on these sites to help give you a visual of what I got to witness! For more information: Crown Jewels

What did I tell you, large diamond or what???

some other facts that didn't really fit into any of the other categories above are:

- the Tower was also home to many exotic pets, such as lions, elephants, and a polar bear! (another fun fact about the polar bear, they use to put it on a leash and let it go fishing in the Thames River!)

- All of the men & women that work at the Tower today are apart British military and the also live in the tower of London as well!! This was our tour guide in his military uniform:

- just like they do at Buckingham Palace, the guards go through a special procedure for their "changing of the guards" 

- From the walls of the Tower, you get an amazing view of the Tower Bridge!!

Currency

One of the hardest things over here to get use to is the currency. I constantly have handfuls of change on me because most of the Great British Pound (£) are coins. It is incredibly annoying to be carrying around that much change and have to dig through it to find the correct amount to give a cashier The Pound is equivalent  to the Dollar and Pents are equivalent to Cents. 

Here is some of the coins I carry around on a daily bases:

2 Pound 

1 Pound

50 Pents

20 Pents

10 Pents

5 Pents

2 Pents

1 Pent

Then you have the actual bill that you can pay with 5, 10, 20, 50 and so forth.

Each piece of currency - coins and bills - has the face of the Queen on it and this will only change once she is no longer Queen, then it will become the next king/queen's faces on the currency. On the other side  of the currency is typically something symbolic, like a lion. 

Tourist Thursday is Back!

Its been a while since Kevin and I have gotten to go down in London and do our Tourist Thursday activities! But we finally got to again this week! Today we went down to the Museum of London which goes over the history of London, even before London existed. They had skeletons pieces of Woolly Mammoths that they found in the area to pre-historic tools to generalized native village layouts that all dated back before London was official. The museum also exhibited various styles of clothing that was use over a century ago to a reconstructed town. 

Along with all the exhibits, the museum is located right next to the one of the only pieces left of the ancient London Wall.The London Wall was built during the Roman Empire (London at this point was call Londonium or something like that) around the 2nd century. It was built around the entire city and used the Thames River as one of the walls as well. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the city was pretty much deserted and the wall began to deteriorate for 400 years. Once civilization returned to the area, the Wall faced many challenges. It survived events such as the Great London Fire of 1666. However, it did not survive the bombings of World War two which lead to most of its destruction.

(I didn't know any of this before the museum so here are some links for information for you guys as well!! London Wall, The Great Fire).

After the Museum, we walked down to St. Paul's Cathedral to take a look around since we were in the area. The cathedral was huge! I was able to take plenty of photos from outside, however once you got through the doors of the church they immediately wanted £ 14 per person (roughly around 21 dollars) to take a look around, so we left. But I did manage to snap a few (secret) shots before walking out!

After we that we headed up a few blocks and ate an Italian Pizza place and headed home for the evening.

On a side-note, yesterday after my history class I began my spring break! And its 2 weeks long!  SO there will hopefully be lots of adventuring next week in London and there will be lots of blogs to post!

Things You Miss While In London

There are several things that you don't expect to miss until you've been in London for about 2 months (well, at least I miss these things)

1. Sunshine.

2. Tacos - Mexican food is just now becoming big around here, but they are only located in the city and there is only a few there.... but we haven't found any yet

3. Doughnuts, American bacon, pancakes, maple syrup - everything breakfast related

4. hair products & tools - my hair pretty much is up 99.9% of the time now because I don't have any way of styling it. I did buy a cheap hair dryer here, but it smells like KFC when I use it.

5. Lunch (well, lunch included in the meal plan that is)

6. Test! - I am sick of writing papers all the time. Most of the kids here haven't had a legit test, like multiple choice, matching, etc for years!

7. Pretzels with salt on them

These are the only things right now that I can think of, I know there is more though. 

Escargot

Here are some photos I forgot to add earlier about my first snail-eating experience!

^before. Looks rather disgusting, doesn't it?

getting the courage to eat it.

yup. i ate a snail.

After. Kevin LOVED them. We were told to dip the leftover juice in bread and finish it off that way, so we literally mopped the bowl clean.

 

Round 2 of snails, this time we a had to actually get it out of the shell.

Paris!

I have just gotten back from Paris and I'm in love with the city! It was an absolutely wonderful experience and I hope to go back someday! I flew out late afternoon on Wednesday (Kevin arrived the next morning, which is a very long story itself.) It was a different experience getting into Paris and having no one around you speaking English. 3 years of high school French could never fully prepare you for the moment, thankfully I did remember how to say "non parli francias" which means I don't speak french. But the view from our room was BEYOND amazing. 

Yes. That is the Eiffel Tower in this image, and yes I got to look at that every night. As cliche as it sounds, it was absolutely breath-taking.

To give you an idea of where things are located around Paris, I figured I would put in a map of where things were located because Paris was HUGE. Even with all of our adventuring, we still had so so much to see! But Paris is broken up in 20 arrondissements, which are basically just 20 different zip codes. This map shows how they are broken up!

Now on to our adventures! So once Kevin arrived Thursday morning we set off to see the chapel Montmartre. There is only one word I could use to describe this place and that is gorgeous. it was on top of a hill that overlooked the city of Paris. It was a little climb up, but well worth the site! We walked around the area for a little bit and then headed down to some of the main streets to explore some more! We made our way to the Arc De Triomphe and Champs Elisees and took some typical tourist-y photos. We then crossed over the Seine River and looked right onto the Eiffel Tower. It almost didn't seem real! I tried my best to take pictures from every angle, which you can find on my facebook album. After soaking up the moment, we headed back to our room for a little rest (as well as stopping to get a true French Baguette to snack on). We then headed out to dinner at a place we found thank to Yelp that ended up being one of the best dinners I have had since being abroad. We started off dinner the true French-style way... with escargot, aka snails. To my surprise, I actually liked it! But it was hard to get over the fact that it was a snail I was eating. Kevin was obsessed with them! He would have ordered more if we hadn't already ordered our main entrees. After dinner we headed back and called it a night! The map below shows the journey we made through Paris in just a few hours (I calculated and it was over 7 miles of just sighting seeing, and my feet are defiantly feeling it now)

Montmartre

Arc De Triomphe

Eiffel Tower

For our second full day in Paris, we started off by grabbing some Crepes. I can easily say I am now addicted to the crepes. I got a strawberry crepe (or a frimbose crepe) and Kevin got a nutella banana. After we got our crepes we went back over to the Eiffel Tower were we left off and went on from there. We thought about going to the top of the tower, but unfortunately it was not open for us to go up. We could have paid to go to the 3rd floor but it was around a 4 hour wait to get there (crazy, right?? since its not even tourist season! and it was early on a Friday!)  We headed straight across the lawn facing the tower towards the old Military School, which was built in 1750. We then headed down the street towards Des Invalides which was built around 1670 and Napoleon  used as his mansion during his time. Now it is used as the national army museum, and napoleon's tomb is located in the museum as well! Afterwards we walked across the Seine river and headed to Notre Dame (which is located on an Island in the Seine River). The cathedral is actually a lot smaller then I imagined it (but don't get me wrong, it was still really big!). We got to go around inside and  look around, there was even a little sermon going on! It was another "I can't believe this is really happening" moment getting to walk around the church. After walking around the church we walked around the rest of the Island and headed to the other side of the river and saw the Chatelet, which is the only piece left of an ancient prison & court that stood nearby but was destroyed by Napoleon. We walked around some more and then took a little break before heading to the local shopping district were I got my very own longchomp purse (for those who don't know, its a purse that is extremely overly priced in the US but you can get it almost 50% off in Paris.) After my puchase, we headed to the Louvre! This museum was bigger then anything you could ever imagine. It would take literally months for you to see this entire museum. We went rather late (around 6pm) because on Fridays from 6-9 the museum is free! Once there Kevin & I headed straight to the one and only, Mona Lisa. We even got to take pictures of it! While walking around the Louvre, I also ended up running into a friend from high point who was studying abroad in southern France. It was crazy! Out of all the places to be at the same time in Europe, let a lone the same museum and the same hallway at the same time. Shows how small this world really is! After the Louvre we headed to Champs Elisees again in search of Le Deurs, which is suppose to be the most famous macaroon shop in Paris! I got a raspberry macarron and Kevin got a vanilla one. This was the first macaroon we had ever had, and boy was it good. Afterwards, we headed to dinner (yes, we ate macaroons before dinner) and then called it a night.  Below is another map that shows our journey throughout the day!

our crepes!

Des Invalides

Notre Dame

Inside from the Notre Dame

The Louvre!

Mona Lisa

Our last day there we packed our bags and took one last look at the Eiffel Tower from our room. We then headed down to get MORE crepes. We then walked around Paris one last time (actually, we tried to go to the Carnavalt Museum which is about the history of Paris, but we ended up getting lost and once we finally got there we were told that we couldn't get in because we had our backpacks with us). We ate some lunch and then got on a train back to the airport and began our journey home!

It was a fabulous trip and I would pay to do it all over again! 

Elections & Kingston!

So this past week was the university's AU and SU presidential elections. The positions are both full-time employees that make a good paycheck for the year (like 22,000 pounds or something is what I was told) and they are basically the voice of the student body. The SU president is in charge of all the student functions and other things related to what the students want. The AU president is in charge of all the athletic functions as well as organizing athletics (basically like a high school sports director in a way). But it is super neat how involved the campus gets and how they students get to vote for actually positions in the school. Most of the people that run for these positions will be graduating in June, so they have a job as soon as they get out!

For the past week students have been wearing VOTE FOR _______ shirts and handing out flyers, even giving out goodies! We had people come into class, approach you while your eating, all sort of stuff! it was crazy! But finally the big day was yesterday (Friday) when all the students got to vote, and if I thought all the previous days were crazy I was wrong. I was bribed with (and not limited to): cupcakes, cookies, hugs, compliments, someone carried my books to class, and I even had a guy offer to buy my drinks at the bar that night! They announced the winners at the bar last night (I can't recall who one since I didn't actually know any of the candidates anyways) but it was an interesting event to be apart of!

Today, one of my friends Sadie & I went into the town nearby, Kingston (which I posted about earlier in my blog) and made up for our homesickness and droopy week by walking around and getting some fresh air.... and maybe a little shopping. But hey, I got my dream chetah print scarf I've been dying for! And it was only 3 pounds! 

I head to Paris on Wednesday, so be on the look out for MILLIONS of photos coming soon  !!!

Breaking News

This is the first day the sun has been 100% out and it's 57! Clearly I've been hit on the head or something to think this is great weather, but its amazing out. Good thing tomorrow is suppose to be close to freezing again.

Free Time in London

A big difference between being at High Point and being here is the amount of free time I have. I am use to having 18 hours of credits with even longer lab hours, countless hours in the library, numerous sorority events & meetings to attend, and then sometime with friends. Here, I'm only in class 8 hours a week and only 3 of my days are occupied with classes. Its been hard getting use to so much free time and I don't really like it to be honest, especially since its not like home where I have crafts and other little things to fill any free time that I have. I've also noticed how much free time I now have on a daily bases because I don't have my straightner/curler (sidenote: my hair is gonna be so healthy when I get home because of all this time spent without being damaged by the heat of those things!) Its also very expensive to go down to central London so its not affordable to go down there multiple times in a week either.

So I thought I would make a list of things that I now do to occupy my time.

1. Work on my papers - I've been working on these for a month now, and they most aren't due until next week. So they're basically done now, and I'm back to no work.

2. TV Shows - thank goodness for hulu and project free tv. I have now watched all 9 seasons of One Tree Hill (each will over 20 episodes per season), I am now watching DanceMoms (its horrible, but it gives me something to do!)

3. Pharmacy School Research - self explanatory, but highly stressful!

4. Plan out trips / Cross my fingers that a plane ticket to Rome will magically drop by 50 pounds.

So despite all the fabulous-ness of being abroad, its also very boring.