London-Sunday & Monday

Later on Sunday we found our way to the infamous Tower Bridge or "London Bridge".

Next it was the Tower of London.  It is the prison and torture and execution site of all those who misbehaved in London since the 1100's.  It is also where the crown jewels are currently held.

The crowd on the left is the location where three queens and many others were executed.  There is now a memorial there.

A member of the British Royal Guard guarding the crown jewels.

This was our tour guide.  He is known as a Beefeater.  That term used to be used for someone who watched over the prisoners and the crown jewels, however, now it's just the term for the tour guides at the Tower of London.  Beefeaters are actually required to live on site and are housed with their families at the Tower of London.  He was a pretty funny guy that told us many gruesome stories.

View of the city from the Tower of London.

The crown jewels were absolutely stunning!  We stood in line for about half an hour and had to walk through safe doors that weighed 4500 pounds each.  Security was very tight and I was not allowed to take pictures.  I saw every kind of jewel you can think of including diamonds the size of golf balls!!  

Next we made our way to Harrods.   Harrods is a 7 story luxury department store in London.  It is huge!  Inside there are departments for every top designer in the world.  Everything is very expensive and only the very wealthy shop at this store.  I felt that it was too tacky to take pictures inside but we walked through the designer departments, touched $10,000 gowns, looked at shoes (of course), walked through the chocolate shop, looked at expensive puppies, and drooled over the designer handbags.  Above the "H" in the picture below you can kind of see the royal crest.  This signifies that the royal family shops at Harrods.  The royal crest is also placed on other shops such as grocery, jewelry, and even lingerie stores showing that that's where the royal family buys their stuff.  There were also two Princess Diana memorials inside.

On Monday before our flight Michael brought us to the ritzy neighborhood of South Kensington.  This is where the wealthy live in London.  I could definitely tell by the kind of cars that were rolling around this neighborhood!

We made our way to Hyde Park, a huge park in this part of town.  It was so beautiful.  I can only imagine what it would look like in the summer!

Hyde park holds the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain.

Well that's all that I've got for London!  Today was a beautiful day in Cork.  It was 50 degrees, blue skies, and sunny!  Such a rare day!  Meghan and I went out to listen to traditional Irish music tonight at a pub called The Rock.  We need to write a paper about these music sessions for our traditional Irish music class. We figured this was a good enough excuse to go out and have a pint!