This morning, our group was excited to go into the capital of the United Kingdom, the great city of London. We boarded our bus with students from Our Lady of Mercy School in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and from the Colegio Peruano Britanico in Lima, Peru. As we wove through the streets of London, we caught glimpses of landmarks like St. Paul’s Cathedral, MI-6, and the new American Embassy in Battersea Park. We crossed the River Thames on Tower Bridge, perhaps the most iconic of the 214 bridges that cross the river.
Our first stop in London was the Tower of London.There were many points of interest to visit in the Tower, and we began with the Crown Jewels. The Jewels include the 140 crowns and instruments of anointing, investiture, and coronation and are a dazzling collection of 23,000 precious and semi-precious stones: many of them even have names like the 530.2 carat Cullinan I or Great Star of Africa set atop the Sovereign’s Scepter and worth 400 million pounds!
William the Conqueror built the Tower as a strategic fortress, and the White Tower (the keep of the castle) remains a London landmark and was our next stop. We saw many coats of armor and weaponry from various time periods and a chapel used by the Order of the Bath, the knights who escorted monarchs to their coronation through the seventeenth century. This part of our visit reminded us of the Tower’s role as a fortress and armory.
The Tower is perhaps most famously known for being a prison and site of execution -and our next stops kept that history in focus. We went to the site where Anne Boleyn, among others, was executed during the reign of Henry VIII. We then chatted with a Yeoman Warder of the Tower who answered our many questions about how one becomes a Yeoman and the history of the Bloody Tower - the last location of the princes of the Tower who were murdered after the death of their father, King Edward IV.
As we left the Tower, we visited the ravens of the Tower. Seven live at the Tower and have their wings clipped as it is said that should the ravens leave the Tower, the fortress will fall. The ravens are not the only animal to have taken up residence. At one time, the Tower was also home to the royal menagerie - which included a polar bear (a gift from the King of Norway) that was known to go fishing in the River Thames.
We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the Thames and boarded a boat for a cruise upriver. We saw a number of landmarks as we progressed to the London Eye. Aboard the Eye, we soared 135 meters in the air for breath-taking panoramas of London.
We returned to campus in time for dinner and the semi-final of the World Cup. It was a thrilling game with England taking an early lead. The energy on campus was electric. Croatia tied the game up in the second half and clinched the spot in the final against France during the overtime play. We had a very full day and are looking forward to sleeping in and enjoying recreation at Charterhouse during our first on-campus day tomorrow.