Woke up early again today. I think we'll make a habit of this! We had a day planned out.. (Changing of the guards, Hyde park and Westminster abbey), but after a quick google search, discovered the changing of the guards wasn't happening that day. So we swapped it with another day from our itinerary. So we bought our queue jump tickets for the Tower of London from the hostel reception, then headed to the underground. Seriously the tube is the best. It's so easy to work out! For those of you who don't know what the Tower of London is, it's basically the oldest tower and fortress in London (built in 10-something, by the Norman king, William the Conquerer). As you walk out from the tube, it looms up before you... It's pretty impressive! A giant castle set by the backdrop of the Thames river! The first stop was about 5 meters inside the entrance (which was a giant arch over a bridge which was over what used to be a moat). There we waited for the first tour of the day, which is given by one of the Yeoman Warders (beefeaters). This guy was really quite funny, as he walked us around the towers, chapel and grounds of the Tower of London, and gave us so much information and stories. It was actually pretty hard to take it all in, if you didn't have a good background knowledge of British history.. Which I don't... It was really interesting though, and I reckon I learnt heaps from him, even though it feels like about 80%2525 of what he was saying went right over my head! After the tour, we went around and explored the rest of it. We went through the white tower (which is in the centre, and was the original structure at the site) where they had a lot of exhibitions about the history of weapons, artillery and armors, etc, and relics of these that had been discovered over the years. There was a walk on top of the walls that we did, that had great views as well as exhibitions in the towers about how the soldiers, royalty and prisoners lived there, including original graffiti that had been engraved into the walls by prisoners. We saw the ravens around the place. Apparently if the six resident ravens were ever to leave the Tower of London the kingdom and the tower would fall. Although the birds had their wings clipped, so that's kind of cheating... After a bit more exploring around the site, we found a room about the menagerie they used to have there, which had info about the crazy animals they kept there and how they looked after them (or really, how they didn't...). One of the kings was given an elephant as a gift once, and they fed him meat and port, and wondered why he died... We went to go see the Crown Jewels after that, which are kept in one of the buildings there, but the line was absolutely ridiculous, and we were pretty wrecked, so we decided to give it a miss, and headed back to the tube and back to Camden. We walked around the streets and finally found our fish and chip place. It was called poppies, and the waitresses were almost all french, and were all dressed in sailor outfits. We ordered our food, and they were out of 3 of the things we asked for... Then 5 mins later, came back to say that my vego meal would be an extra 10 minutes... Then 10 minutes later came back to say they were sold out of the vego meal... But on the upside, my meal was free! I got chips, tartare sauce, and mushy peas, which are a massive thing here, and are actually much more tasty than they sound! We headed back to the hostel and had a VERY early night! It was 6pm... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz