The Tower of London

You may disagree (but you’d be wrong, wrong, WRONG, I tell you, wrong!), but I think the Tower of London is the most fantastic thing to tour when visiting, living or slumming-it in London.

I mean, honestly, peeps, it’s got EVERYTHING!  Castle, river entrance, moat, portcullises, massive gates, executions, murder, ravens, intrigue, royal jewels, terrific tours and a gift shop.

That being said, it sucks for children.  Absolutely sucks.  Like an electolux, I’m saying.  It’s because they’re a prisoner of their own success.

The Yeoman Warders who give the tours (Beefeaters to us yanks) are typically terrifically entertaining storytellers.  So their tours are packed.  My poor kids get squished, smooshed and man-handled unless they’re jammed right up in front.  Their views are of the general lumbar area of the person in front of them.  I tried to listen to the guide at two stops, but I just couldn’t put my kids through it.  His stories were probably only vaguely interesting to them and I didn’t want them covered with bruises by the end of the one-hour tour.

So we toured on our own.

Now I’m not a moron about this place.  I know it’s going to be terrifically busy, but we are here in mid-May and I did go on a Thursday.  Short of arriving at 4 P.M., I don’t know what I could have done to tour it when the crowds would be the smallest.

Still, the wait to see the Crown Jewels was 25 minutes.  That’s a sort of no-Moms-land amount of time with kids.  If I’d remembered to bring my stupid IPod, I could have plugged the kids into a podcast story or some Zumba music that they love.  But I didn’t.  So we listened to a street performer and then toured the armoury museum (sort of a snore, but I wanted them to see something in the chance we skipped the Crown Jewels entirely).

When we got out of the museum, the line for the Crown Jewels was, seemingly, tiny.  So we hopped in it.  BIG mistake.  The normal queue-loving English have really dropped the ball here.  After waiting nicely in line outside, once you get inside, everyone is jammed into bedroom-sized and larger rooms that have no discernible queue system.  So you walk in the door and, depending on your home country, either search for a line or push around the sides of the suckers to shove your kids forward to the front of the line.

Talk about a recipe for cranky tourists (myself included).

After four rooms of this, during which I debated leaving the exhibit for more than half the time, we get to see the Crown Jewels.  A moving platform keeps gawpers and gapers from gawping and gaping too long.  But then, fizz, it’s over. 

Still, I suppose it’s something the kids will remember.  Those crowns are quite nice.