Tower of London!

Well, today was the second day of my two weekly weekends, so I decided to head into the city to see what I could see! Destination: Tower of London.
Verdict: very cool. A few basics first. It is very old. Lots of people died there. It really is the location of the crown jewels, I saw them with my own eyes, and the beefeater tour guide told us they are in fact the crown jewels.
Also of note, this was my first time even walking into Egham (the town my school is in) on my own, nonetheless then taking the train into London and the tube. It all went quite smoothly. 9.50 pounds for the train + an all day tube pass. A little expensive, but not tooooo bad. What killed me was that tickets to the Tower were 14.00 pounds after the student discount. Gag. Knowing I probably wouldn't be able to buy my way back in I spent allllll day there!
So I started with a tour from a beefeater (technically a Yeoman Warder). They are technically the guards of the tower, guarding both the prisoners and the royal treasures within. That's why they are all former members of the armed forces (except the navy for some reason...). In practice they are tour guides and a sight in and of themselves due to their funny uniforms. The most interesting part... they live there! That's right, the Yeoman Warders and their families live in the Tower of London, and every night at 10:00 get locked in!
The tour was actually pretty brief, and focused mostly on death and stuff, but it was interesting. It ended in the Tower's chapel, which serves as the burial place for a bunch of famous people (like Anne Boleyn). Apparently, however, during one past renovation the builders were told to preserve any remains they stumbled across in the floor, and to try to identify them. Turns out they found over 1,000. They could only identify 33. The Tower's kind of a scary place!
After that I did my own wandering. Saw more armor, weapons, etc. Next went to see the Crown Jewels. To settle arguments... yes the Crown Jewels are at the Tower of London, and yes they are the real ones (or so says the Yeoman Warder). The joy of going on a not special Thursday... nobody was there! I just walked right in to see them, bypassing the rows and rows and rows of fences in place to control crowds.
The last part was coolest. I walked the wall (as you have figured out by now I'm sure, the tower is a complex of towers, not just one), and went into a bunch of the smaller towers. In one, the Salt Tower, they have preserved scratchings on the walls from prisoners dating back to the 1500s! About half of them are Jesuit and Catholic symbols. I included a (dark) picture of the most intricate and amazing piece of graffiti though. It is an astrology chart chipped into the wall by a man accused of sorcery (I don't think he helped his case). The level of detail and the perfect lines and circles are awesome!
I should get going to do some reading at this point, since I didn't do any today, but I wanted to share what's up. Tomorrow I have my last two classes (Arid Africa and Geomorphology). Saturday Royal Holloway is taking the internationals into the city to see the National Gallery and take a Jack the Ripper tour, and then Sunday I am sure I will need to catch up on some work!

See ya!