Here's that second picture of the Abbey that I was talking about. I love how the lines are so perfect and seem to just go off to infinity (it reminds me of learning perspective in art class).
After going to the Abbey, Helga and I went to the Tower of London. It is amazing to see something so historic amongst all the modern developments around it. This picture that I took of it sort of gives a taste of that:
When inside, we got to walk around all the different towers and courtyards (or most) and we even got to see the crown jewels! I wasn't allowed to take photos in that part and there was even a moving walkway that you had to stand on so that no one could just hang out around the diamonds for too long. It was incredible how enormous they were! This next photo is of Henry VIII's armor. I didn't get very good photos of the other king's armor unfortunately, but this one gives a good idea of what they look like. It's funny to see things like this being from the US. Our history is so short and when we learn about history from Europe with knights and armor and such, it almost seems to fantastic to be true. Seeing it in person is really surreal. I can't think of any other way to describe it!
This next photo was taken from one of the towers at the Tower of London. It's not the London Bridge (that one isn't very impressive!), but a different one. I thought it was absolutely beautiful!
This is a photo of one of the guards that was standing on guard outside of the tower which held the crown jewels. It's hard to see in the pictures, but he is standing on his heels the entire time that he is on guard. It looks really uncomfortable, and I learned that he likely had to wiggle his toes that whole time in order to keep himself from fainting!
This photo from the Tower of London is from an exhibit of the horses and armor of all the kings. I love how the photo turned out, I think it's really a lovely composition.
Finally, here is a picture of the 'monument' which is at the location of the beheading of many historical figures including Ann Boleyn. Obviously the executions didn't take place on that little glass pillow, but it was an eerie representation of what happened at that spot years ago.
The next set of photos are from a very old, rather famous cemetery in London. The first photo I hope gives a sense of how crowded and overwhelming the entire grounds are.
This is my favorite photo that I took, and I think it almost looks like a poster or postcard! It was just a little statue on a grave marker. The rest are just photos that I snapped of some of the monuments that I thought were particularly beautiful. Some of the graves were for people who died over one hundred years before I was even born!
