As you can see from the pictures we went to the Tower of London. Once the palace for the British Royals, it is now the home of the crown jewels.
Before we went to the Tower we went on a tour of London. London, like metro Denver, is actually made up of two cities: London, which is about one square mile in size, and the city of Westminster. The metro area has about 8 million residents.
London is a key financial city and has more banks than Tokyo or New York. One thing that was very evident were all the "Diversions" because of construction. At one point the bus had to back up and turn around. I'm not sure I could have done it in a car in the space allowed let alone in a full size bus. Our driver, Sean, is amazing!
We finished our tour of London at the Tower of London where we got to go in for a special opening of the Crown Jewels. Translated, that means no crowd. The day before they said the line to get in was a 2 hour wait.
We entered the Tower and had a short tour with a nice history of the tower, then we went to see the Crown Jewels. No photos were allowed. They were amazing. One of the biggest diamonds in the world was cut into huge diamonds and two of those big diamonds are in the crown jewels. There were crowns from previous monarchs and the crown used in the coronation of the current queen. I think they said the crown weighs someting like 8 pounds and that the queen actually practices before wearing it.
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