Our first trip into central London was specifically to see the Tower of London and Madame Tussauds. As mentioned above we caught the train from Uxbridge to get to our destination, which was Aldgate station (No – not Aldridge, Aldgate!). From the Aldgate station it is a fairly easy and straight forward walk to the Tower of London – taking around 15 minutes. There are some interesting sights to see near the Tower as well, including London’s oldest church ‘All Hallows By The Tower’, which is incredibly around 1350 years old. It is free to enter and as well as several ancient artefacts and amazing architecture of old, it also has a Crypt area to look around.
When we first arrived at the Tower we saw what can only be described as a frighteningly long queue, in fact I would estimate it was about 150 metres long or close to it, with a steady crowd of people either joining it or milling around near it. Luckily after many decades of running the Tower of London as a tourist attraction the officials have pretty much become experts in how to get people into the historic London highlight fairly quickly.
You can either book your tickets online, or if you are lucky you can still get some at the ticket office on the day, for a specific timeslot. Once the timeslot opens, the ticket processing staff move that allotted group of people into the Tower area efficiently, and within about 10 minutes the once terrifying line of seemingly never ending people disappears. But keep in mind the queue for the next timeslot will quickly start to form.
I must admit I found the description Tower of London a bit confusing because the name obviously gives the impression there is a tower – and it is in London. Well, that is sort of 60% correct. There is a tower there, and it is definitely in London – but there are also another 20 towers at the same location. In other words, the Tower of London is actually made up of 21 towers in total and is pretty much actually a castle, or maybe more rightly described as a castle complex.
We had bought our tickets online before we even left New Zealand to ensure we didn’t miss out. The tickets can be sold out for most days and times several days if not weeks in advance, so book early – particularly if it is during a peak holiday period. As I mentioned before, we were silly enough to travel the UK during their summer school holiday period so pretty much everywhere was busy! We had selected the 11am timeslot so we had plenty of time to look around the towers, and still have time to get to Madame Tussauds where we had also pre booked our tickets for an afternoon time slot. Initially, though there were still a large number of people around, it wasn’t at the stage where you would rather be locked up in a tower for twelve months by yourself than be shoulder to shoulder with a thousand tourists all fighting for the best photo shooting position. However by about 12.30 it had changed and the large number of people now milling around made it difficult to enjoy the many sights to see, or to even be able to take a decent picture without having a Mum, Dad, Grandma, and 3.5 children all standing in the way!
I would suggest you visit either first thing, or in the last time slot for the day so others are not all flowing in after you. We spent about two hours here, maybe just over, which is about the minimum you need for a fairly decent look around – though we didn’t go to see the crown jewels display due to the very long line – so I would add another 30 minutes if you plan on seeing those. London Tower definitely is worth a visit – so much history and amazing architecture all within one location. You are looking at a cost of around $60nz to $70nz for just an entrance ticket, and $120nz+ for a guided tour.
We rate the Tower of London 9 out of 10 Kiwis