The Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London

For 18 months I lived close to the Tower of London, being lucky enough to have to walk past it every day to and from work. It is a beautiful building and one of the few major tourist attractions that I'd genuinely recommend visitors to go and see; it's actually worthy of the long queues and massive tickets prices.

The Tower of London

I've lived in London for nearly 2 years now, and I've done all of the free things the city has to offer, but I've not really done many of the paid tourist attractions.

My boyfriend lives 5 minutes walk from the Tower of London, and I take for granted that I walk past a worldwide famous building so often. We decided to actually become tourists in our own town, and take a trip into the Tower last weekend. 

The building is so iconic, and I got majorly snap happy, and loved the chirpy yeoman doing the tour.

The whole place is separated into a few different sections which are indoors (luckily as it was snowing and FREEZING). The armouries were beautiful and showed suits of armour from the Tudors onwards. The difference between Henry VIII when he was young to when he was 49 really highlighted how much he liked to indulge!

It sounds strange but I find it so weird to think that these things were actually used by real people. It's bizarre to think that something that somebody would use every day ends up behind strengthened glass and gawked at by millions of visitors every year. It's all so fascinating, and I particularly love seeing old books like the one below. It's so ornate and extravagant! 

Do you ever play tourist in your home town?