Tower of London - Ceremony of the Keys

Completely forgot to mention our evening tour of the Tower of London. I guess we've been living here so long, that I forget when we do the touristy stuff.
Anway, we were booked to see the Ceremony of the Keys, which is a ritualized way to close up the joint for the night. Aah, but what would the Tower be without its historical rituals? First we had a tour of the Tower by one of the resident Yoeman warders. There are about 150 (yeomen & their families) living inside the tower walls and get locked in every night. That is why they have their own doctor and pub and chaplain onsite. Although what would you do if you had a case of the munchies round about midnight?
For Ceremony, The Chief Warder, dressed in a Beefeater costume, marches his way to the front gate from the Byward Tower. After he locks the Traitor’s Gate, he makes his way towards the Bloody Archway tower, where he is stopped by a sentry. As part of its tradition, the sentry and Warder hold an exchange:
Sentry: ‘Halt, Who goes there?’
Warder: ‘The Keys!’
Sentry: ‘Whose keys?’
Warder: ‘Queen Elizabeth’s keys.’
Sentry: ‘Pass Queen Elizabeth’s keys – Alls well!’

After the traditional exchange the Chief Warder lifts his hat and proclaims ‘God preserve Queen Elizabeth.’ The clock chimes for 10 o’clock as the other Queen’s guards raise their bonnets and say ‘Amen.’ The entire process takes no more than 7 minutes, but has been going on for the last 700 years. Even during World War II, when German bombs rained down on London, the ceremony still took place with the exception of a direct hit, which delayed the ceremony by one-half hour.
I had heard that if you are really nice to your yeoman guide, he might invite you back to their pub, but unfortunately we had no luck regardless of how many hints we dropped! We ended our evening in a local pub with Zim and Michelle and got home by 11:30 pm.