Although Sunday was yet another free day, we had a tour of the Tower of London scheduled in the morning. Bus 3 and 4 were first, followed by buses 1 and 2 later on. This was fortunate for us because that meant that we could have the rest of the day to explore freely without having to worry about being anywhere at any particular time (though we had to be back to the hostel fairly early-ish due to the early morning the next day).
At the Tower of London, we waited in the absolutely massive queue for the Crown Jewels. That must have been the longest queue I have ever been in. The queue went through some of the other rooms of the building, out the door, snaked around for a bit and then stretched out down the path from one wall to the other. Outside, someone got their photos taken with one of the guards. In the rooms, there were little videos playing displaying some information about the crown jewels so that you had something to do while waiting. When you actually got to the jewels, you had to go on a conveyor belt so that you didn’t stand gazing at them and holding up the queue. The end crown, if I remember correctly, was only worn once because the king or whoever had to wear it complained that it was too heavy!
After coming out of the building, we had lunch and were given some free time to explore the Tower of London (which, incidentally, is made up of several towers) as we wished, though we had to be back to the spot we were eating by a particular time. After eating lunch I decided to explore the central tower which displayed lots of old weapons and armour which were quite interesting to look at. Towards the end of it I needed to go to the toilet, so I waited to go downstairs in the super slow-moving queue and then made a beeline for the toilets (at least the queue for the toilets was relatively fast-moving!) before dashing back to the meeting point. I ended up being exactly on time (to the nearest minute, at least- not sure about seconds).
When we left, we decided that we would head for the British Museum. The British Museum is absolutely huge, and it’s free to enter. We had time to visit the China, Korea and Egypt rooms before it was time to head back downstairs. When we did head back downstairs to our meeting place (under the banner which said “Australian Season” on it), we were told that we were allowed to have another 30min to explore, but it was a bit pointless since the museum was so large we wouldn’t be able to do very much with half an hour, especially now that we were away from the exhibits, so we went to the gift shop instead. I had £5.06 left to spend by the next day, so I spent £4.99 on a Horribly Famous book about Julius Caesar and was left with only 7p, so I had spent my money fairly neatly. (I found another 1p coin when I got home, so now I have 8p. Whoop-de-doop.)
As we left, the other members of my group decided to stop by some of the souvenir shops. I had a look around as well, to see if there was anything that 7p could buy or if anybody was 7p short of anything. The cheapest item available was 10p, and that was a postcard.
Finally, we returned to the youth hostel for dinner. That night, Diffy and I were the sensible ones. We both set our alarms and made plans to go to bed at least semi-early. Xanthe and Boyuan, however, decided to go to Jess’ room. I decided to go after them and give them one of the keys to our room so that they did not have to wake us up when they returned. I gave them an awful fright when I went over there. When I knocked, I heard agitated whisperings: they thought I was a teacher! I waited while some of them hid and the rest tried to look like they were almost ready for bed. At long last, the door was opened, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I handed Xanthe the key and headed back to my room to hopefully get some decent rest before the next day.
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