After visiting London once, it became obvious to me that there were just too many places to see in a single day. Therefore, my British friend and I decided to go to London once again during one of the last weekends of my stay, to explore the locations that we were unable to visit last time. We had two major things scheduled: in the morning the Tower of London and in the afternoon the World War 2 warship HMS Belfast.
We met at 11 am at the entrance of Waterloo station. After taking the Underground to the Tower of London stop, we first purchased our tickets. Visiting the fortress is not cheap, with tickets for an adult costing around 33 pounds. The fortress is composed out of a moat (that no longer contains water), a double layer of fortress walls and several buildings located in the courtyard, including the Royal Mint, the armoury and the garrison barracks. One of the buildings also contains the crown jewels.
The first building we visited was the Royal Mint. This complex, located just next to the entrance of the fortress, was responsible for almost 700 years of British coin production. Afterwards, we made a full circle around the castle by taking a walk on the inner fortress walls.
We also wanted to visit the crown jewels. However, since the estimated queue time was around 2 hours, we decided to skip this. Instead we took a look at the armoury, located at the centre of the courtyard. The armoury contains the (decorative) armoured suits of all English kings, originating from the end of the Middle Ages and later periods. The armoured equipment (both for man and horse) was made with a very high skill and craftmanship. All the detailed decorative inscriptions in the armours were highly impressive.
After taking a short fish and chips break at 1 pm, we crossed the Tower Bridge to visit the HMS Belfast, a World War 2 cruiser that is permanently docked at the quay of the Thames. The interior of this old warship is pretty cramped, especially when we take into account that 800 people used to live onboard for many weeks. It was interesting to see how the original shipbuilder assigned a specific function to every single corner of the ship, without wasting precious space. It was clearly not designed for people larger than 1 meter 80, as my friend bumped his head around 3-4 times due to the low sealing, which was a very funny sight. It took almost 2 hours to explore all the decks of the ship. After doing this, we called it the day.
Visiting London a second time was a good idea, since there are so many interesting places to see in the capital. A must do when you are in the United Kingdom!