May 14th, 2015 London

May 14th, 2015

         Today was the day that we experienced the famous London rain for the first time. It was also the day that we visited many different locations. We got to visit the site of where some of the Olympic Stadiums/event locations. First we took the train to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Center, where we went inside the Aquatic Center and went up the Arcelor Mittal Orbit. The swimming pool was really impressive because of the size of the pool. I also have never seen diving platforms where people compete diving competitions off of, and this site had them in the same vicinity. The architecture of this building was very beautiful, and I love the fact that you can tell that people often come to use the facilities. We went up the 'Orb', which is a structure that whose metal parts were donated to the Olympic site by the architect of the Olympic Center. From this view we were able to see 360 degrees of  London as it stretches miles away. It was interesting to know that the only "high risers", or  tall buildings, were added for the 2012 Games. I was one of the people that walked down from the orb. Unfortunately I didn't find it I terestig because you can't really see anything while you are coming down due to the cage-like structure of the steps.
         After the Olympic center, we stayed in the Westfield mall area for a little more than an hour. This shopping center was also added for the London Games so that the fans would have a place to visit and it makes the east side of London more approachable. The mall was huge and the dining area seemed more like a cluster of five-star restaurants than it did a food court. After meeting up with the group again, we took the Train to the Tower Bridge area to visit the Tower of London.
         The Tower of London is a historic museum type of stop that reserves the history of the royals from Great Britain's past. As we were walking in the first section, we got caught in the middle of a guard change. This was a special ceremony that is famous in London and it is something that I always wanted to witness. The guards stay in their post for hours without moving and many people lined up to take pictures of them even after the ceremony was over. We finally got into the Crown Jewels section of the tour. Here we saw the most impressive pieces of jewelry that date back to King Henry (although sadly I can't remember which Henry, which probably makes this fact a little less reliable), to the current Queen. Some pieces were missing from their displays, which looked odd. Someone from our group jokingly said "they were stolen", but we later found out that those same pieces were used in a ceremony recently. In fact, the crowns, staffs, orbs and other ceremonial jewelry are still used- they get taken out of the display as soon as they are needed.
         The other second of the Tower Bridge that we saw had hundreds of different armors, swords, daggers and even minted coins. My favorite part of this exhibit was the interactive portion, where we could feel the different coins used back then and we could "try" different weapons. We could see how much detail went into using the coins at that time, which was really amazing given the time perdiod but it was no less impressive that in the recent years, designs for the currency could be put together like a puzzle piece to form one of the seals of London. After the Tower of London, we stepped out into the rain once more to get pictures of the "London bridge", which is actually the Tower bridge. Here we perfected taking selfies with monuments before heading back to the hotel. Regardless of the rain and traveling, we had a great time today and I especially won't forget the lasting impressions (which seems to be the theme of this post) of the historic places of the royal background and of the Olympic Games.