Day 7: Benedict Cumberbatch and a few other semi-important things

 

So like I told you we started our morning with buying Hamlet tickets, then we headed over to Buckingham palace once again to see the changing of the guard. Here are some short videos so that you can see part of the process!

Here we are at St. James park with Buckingham Palace in the background.

Then after lunch, which I did not take a picture of, I headed over to the Royal Albert Concert hall. It was huge and gorgeous. It had so much history. One of the coolest parts was the royal box owned by the Queen, passed from Queen Victoria down to Queen Elizabeth. She also has a private entrance and sitting room for her personal use.

Then right behind the hall is Hyde park. There is a huge monument to Prince Albert and then I just included a picture of part of the lovely little park.

Then I came home, packed a little, and got ready to go see Hamlet. It was truly amazing what they had done. It was definitely worth the money it would have originally cost but it was especially worth the sacrifice of sleep. I mean it was truly amazing. We decided to wait afterward to get some autographs. I got one from Ciaran Hinds. He was the wicked King/uncle. Then Alyssa got a little video of when Benedict Cumberbatch came out. Excuse a little foul language of one of the girls next to us, it was just really exciting. Alyssa was on of the few to get his autograph and the whole experience made it totally worth it!

Day 6: Tower of London , the british museum and a little more!

We started off the day with a lovely little breakfast of hot chocolate and a croissant. It was delicious! To be honest the pastries and things here are just so delicious I feel like it isn't fair. Everything always seems to taste so good and such high quality, where in the states it is just quick and easy. That is one thing I am not looking forward to as much. 

On a different note we finally went to see the tower of london. We lived right by it and passed it everyday, but we finally went in. It was much bigger than we had thought. Here is the outside wall. Where the grass is, is where water used to be. Then we walked on the inner wall and found this cute little turret that we took pictures in.

Here is some original building from King Charles I. It was built around 1100 ad.

Here is a set up of the bedroom with typical fabric and wall painting etc.

Here is the chapel where supposedly one of the kings was murdered.

A Beautiful door!

View of the tower bridge from the inner wall.

Coins from around the 1100's

Example of what Chain mail is like.

One interesting thing is that on two sides of the outer wall, there are little apartments and people currently live in them. I would suppose it is the people that work there, but I never found out for sure!

One cool part was a tour that housed prisoners the first picture is the view of the window from the top cell and the second picture is of the original wall drawings of the prisoners.

Here are two interesting things I read about the prisoners in the tower.

Here we are in the rain outside where they hold the crown jewels. I imagined like how they show it in the Sherlock episodes when Moriarty steals the crown jewels but it was not at all like that. They have a crown for every monarch, each is individual in style, then they have the official outfit they wear and then they have each of the pieces that they hold in separate areas. It was a very interesting set up, and it was cool to see so much history. 

Then in the center they have a history of the tower of london, which the hall of kings which has every king mounted on a horse with his armor and has been on display for 100s of years.

Here is how the tower used to look.

These are all of the kinds and their swords. In one area it asked why the queens didn't have any armor or anything to contribute and they sign said that it was because the queen's didn't wear armor because they didn't have any.

Apparently the money for the UK is made in the tower of london so they explained the latest update of the money and how they represent the english shield!

Here is a guard guarding the crown jewels.

Then we went to baker st. to see the sherlock sight!

Then I saw some funny looking kit kats.

I saw a chipotle in london and I thought I would share it.

Here was the official beatles store. They had some really cool stuff in there, especially the photos.

Then I went over to King's Cross station.

Here is their version of platform 9 3/4

Then for traditions sake I did a brass rubbing. The first is a picture right at the start and the second is the finished product. It was really fun!

Here is the British Museum. They had a ton of different artifacts and so I took a few pictures to show you all!

The grand entrance!

Greek artifacts

These bracelets were so thin that they shook with all of the walking in the room.

I really loved seeing these in their original form!

Then they had a display on clocks.

A really old chess set.

Cool Wedgewood

Benjamin Franklin

Rosetta Stone

Then we kind of did this crazy thing. So while we were there we discovered that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing Hamlet for 12 weeks only. The only problem was the tickets cost almost 500 dollars so we really couldn't justify spending that much. So I thought well if we go to the stage door we can see him in person. Of course we got to the door too late but we started chatting with these girls outside. They said that you could stand in a queue and get 10 pound tickets if you were willing to spend the night outside. So my good buddy Alyssa spent the night outside with about 30 other people and in the morning I came to relieve her and bought the tickets. We were number 4 and 5 in line. So then we get to day 7.