I finished my old Tower of London entry with a statement of intent to build a better portfolio of it on future visits. Quite a few years came and went by before I had a chance to do that. On the recent trip to London, the Tower was near the top of the list for the first-timer in our party, so fitting it into the itinerary was a no-brainer.
While waiting in a slow-moving line for ticketholders in our timed-entry slot, I took a few exterior pictures of the great castle’s walls and towers.
There were also a couple of nice perspectives with other landmarks in the background.
Once we got through, our first order of business was to join the Yeoman Warder tour.
Led by one of the colorful resident royal guards, these tours are quite informative, covering many of the major historic events that underpin the World Heritage recognition of the Tower. The crowd following the Warder is larger than what is usually to my taste, and you have to hustle to get close to him when moving from one tour stop to another, but the roughly 45-minute-long activity is among the most entertaining guided tours you could have anywhere.
As luck would have it, the light drizzle that continued through the whole morning turned into persistent rain by the time the tour ended. I had to put my moisture-averse camera away. There is no photography allowed in the Crown Jewels collection, and no room to take pictures in the watchtowers on the battlements – aside from those, we were outside in the rain for the remainder of our visit (the Royal Apartments were inopportunely closed for refurbishment works, and the dungeons were not something the rest of my party had any interest in). As far as photo sets go, the Tower remains a leading contender for the title of the most sparsely photographed site on my WH roster relative to the number of visits.
You would be right to guess that as soon as we exited the grounds onto the quay, the rain started to let up. I took one more shot of the White Tower before we proceeded onto our subsequent plans for the day.
