Tower of London

Words seem to be in short supply at the moment - so this is a rather picture heavy post of our lovely day out in London on Friday at the Tower of London.  Because of the glorious blue sky I couldn't help but take rather a lot of photos.

The impressive White Tower with part of the original Roman wall in front.

Tower Bridge.

Window

I loved the way the vegetation was growing on this window and experimented with different settings.

Archers.

Courtyard

here were lots of animals dotted around the place....  

For six hundred years, the Tower of London's most exotic prisoners were animals!

The elephant was sent to England in 1255 by the King of France - the only elephant ever seen in England at this time.  

A 'School of Monkeys' first arrived around 1799, but were disbanded in when one of the monkeys 'tore a boy's leg'!

They certainly look like they are eyeing up the tourists!

A white bear (probably a Polar Bear) was given by the King of Norway in 1252 and was allowed to swim in the Thames at the end of a long leash to catch fish. 

The only wild animals to remain today are the seven ravens (one spare) who are looked after by the Ravenmaster.

They eat at amazing 170g of raw meat a day, as well as bird biscuits soaked in blood. Yuck!  Rather them than me.  I don't even like soaking my biscuits in a cup of tea.  They also enjoy an egg once a week, a rabbit complete with fur occasionally and scrapes of fried bread

We were fortunate enough to see the changing of the guard.

Arghh! Didn't know I'd been walking around all day with my hat pushed up like that!

Me, my eldest son and his girlfriend.

London from the Tower Wall

Old mixed with new...  

I wonder what will still be standing in 100 - 1000 years time?!  I can hazard a bet it will be the old!

It looks like the forgot to finish the top of this!

One of the castle courtyards.

The day draws to a close....

What seemed like too soon the day drew to a close.  Six hours just wasn't enough time to see everything!  We did two 'tours' the second of which started in the chapel in the White Tower;  This was the most interesting as the guide was engaging and interesting and full of knowledge.  

Definitely a good time of year to visit some of these places as it wasn't heaving with people like in the warmer months.  

All in all a very good, if not tiring, day out.

A Photo A Day Challenge: January: 2 - 11

2:  What I Did Today - Played my clarinet

3:  Water

4: Circle

5: Leaves

6: Something Blue

7: Reading

8: Landscape

9: Shoes

10: Lucky

11: Outside

A Photo A Day Challenge: January: 1. Black & White

Wishing you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

I am hoping to do a photo a day this year, but thought I would just do it 'month by month'. I have decided to use the 'Photo a Day Challenge' prompts from 'Fatmumslim' blog which can be found here.

My first photo for the year is:

1: Leaves

Christmas Day

A very lovely Christmas Day was had with family yesterday - just missing our youngest son who didn't want to come and my family in New Zealand who I miss dreadfully.

Christmas Morning

Little folk and presents gathered around the tree. 

Christmas Table - getting prepared

Merry Christmas!

Desserts:

Pavlova

Trifle

Christmas Pudding, Fresh Fruit Salad, Trifle, Pavlova

Loaf of bread for tea - a Christmas tradition of mine is to make a loaf of fresh bread - which always gets demolished!

Light Tea

Percy - pulled the stuffing out of this toy in the first five minutes!

With his antler

My Aunty Val with her new shower cap

Val & my MIL

Uncle Bob, Val & Mum (inlaw)

Hubby asleep - after all eating is such hard work!

Snooze....

Steven in his requested Christmas jumper that I made.

Happy 1st December.

Wow, 1st December already!  How did that happen?

Been rather busy these last few weeks, painting and decorating, holding an afternoon tea party and culminating in my older son's graduation 'Passing Out Ceremony' as Officer of the Watch on Saturday night.

It was a lovely evening and we are very proud of how hard he has worked these last three years.  

He only has a couple of weeks left at Warsash now and then is home for the holidays before setting off on the high seas again in February/March.

So what about this painting and decorating?

Our younger son has left home.

So we changed the room from this....

...to this!  We now have a dining room.

Really pleased with it.  A few finishing touches still have to be done - the window frame will need painting in the spring/summer and the skirting boards need to be painted....oh and a new door as we had to remove the old one as he put a hole in it. 

Having a dining room meant I was able to finally invite some friends for a lovely old fashioned afternoon tea - we had a lot of fun!

Being able to remove the dining table and wall unit from the lounge meant we could space that out a bit more.

It feels much more open now.

Nice to have some space.

The Christmas tree will fit where the dolls are having their 'tea party' and after Christmas my writing bureau will move into that spot.

I started putting up some decorations today - and will gradually put up decorations over the next couple of weeks, updating photos as I do so.

In the meantime I still  have to tidy up the Sailor's room as I have been using that to store things while decorating and shifting the rest of the house round!

The work is never ending.

We had a really lovely Advent Concert at Church on Sunday - so much better and far more enjoyable than last year.  Lots of singing over the next few weeks with various rehearsals and concerts - so keeping busy with that as well.

Happy 1st December!