Friday, Jan. 14 ---
--- You can probably guess the beginning by now -- wake up, eat, shower, etc. After this exciting new addition to my day, I meet up with the group for our second class trip of the week. This one is taking us to the Tower of London, one of the oldest monuments in town.
This is a beautiful old castle, one of the main defense points for the city on the Thames that is filled with different towers to protect the river and the city. We go on a guided tour with one of the Yeoman Warders (also called Beefeaters, just like the gin. An interesting story is why -- these were the people in charge of defending the King and his quarters, an important job, to say the least. Because of this, the King fed these men meat from his personal supply of high quality foods so that they would remain big and strong. Any guesses as to what type of meat it was? That's right, beef. These were among the only people in the entire kingdom who got to eat beef (the kind that doesn't make you foam at the mouth) with any regularity.)
We learn of all the deaths by beheading or hanging in greatly gruesome detail thanks to our effervescent tour guide, Tony. Our fun is cut short, though, when a guy in the crowd (directly next to me) passes out and has a mild seizure. (How strange that was, lemme tell ya. All of a sudden this guy just falls over and I'm like, what the hell is this guy doing? Then he starts twitching and I eat crow.) He gets up and looks OK (he says the same) and explains that that hasn't happened to him in a couple of years. Tony continues on his speech for a couple of minutes, delving right back into the gory and grim story of one poor chap who loses his head (literally, of course. This one was cool, though, because the condemned didn't pay the executioner before he died, a typical custom back in this era to ensure the executioner does a good job and kills you with one stroke. This fellow forgot and it ended up taking 6 strokes of the axe to finally end his life. Now my question is, do you actually black out after the first stroke of the axe even though your head is still on, or do you feel the others? I'm hoping for the former because the latter seems a bit harsh no matter what your crime.)
Everything is going well; the crowd is eating out of Tony's palm, and then the guy falls over again and has another seizure! How horrible. Tony tends to him and tells us to get out of Dodge, so we comply and wander away to look at the storied Crown Jewels. (For those who were worried, the guy ends up being OK and walks away under his own power, but Tony is lost forever -- I couldn't find him the rest of the afternoon. Buggers.)
The Crown Jewels, despite my skeptical predisposition (they're probably just gaudy pieces of jewelry -- whoopdeedoo) were amazing. They were absolutely beautiful. Crowns encrusted with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, scepters with giant, giant diamonds (the one scepter has the First Star of Africa in it, the world's largest diamond -- this thing looks like a baseball. Crazy...)
Amidst the increasingly repetitive, yet still startling beautiful, items, there was one really cool item -- the Exeter Salt. This is an ornate tower-looking thing that was covered in gold and jewels (surprise.) The interesting thing about this, and all the other salts, was this -- the guard told me that salts were often gifts to the King or Queen when they threw a party. The larger the salt that was given, the closer the offerer got to sit to His and Her Majesty at the dinner table.
What was really cool about this particular salt, though, despite its delicate, detailed splendor, was the less noticeable aspects of it. All salts, in addition to being lovely little decorations of incredible value, actually held salt, which was a rare and valuable commodity in those days. This one also, when you pushed in some of the tiny cannons that circled the top of the tower, opened hidden compartments that were filled with other valuable spices! How cool! Beautiful, highly valuable, AND useful -- my ears are burning! Someone must be talking about me...
After checking out the Jewels we head over to the White Tower, the central and inaugural part of the Tower of London, and this is filled with all sorts of goodies. It contains a museum that explains the history of the Tower and key moments of London's history. For example, it showcases all sorts of different medieval armors and weapons, some interesting elements being the different parts of horse armor -- the shaffron guards the horse's head, the crinet the top of the neck, the crupper covers the top of the horse's ass (for once that phrase actually means what it says and isn't a derogatory comment aimed at me!) and the side of the rear legs, the peytral covers the bottom of the chest and the side of the front legs, and the flanchard hovers over the sides right beneath the saddle.
Some other nifty items are the actual battle armor for King Henry VIII (which is from 1540 and absolutely huge! The guy apparently was as big as legend said...) and Charles I (from 1612) (The armor for the tiny princes is also there and it looks hilarious -- imagine the Lollipop kids from Wizard decked out in full body armor and you've got the right mental image.)
I learned the difference between the different types of arrowheads -- barbed arrowheads cause maximum blood loss and prevented falling out, but pointed arrowheads (just like the tip of a pencil) pierced almost all armors and thus were the most versatile.
The fact that Henry VIII had a white bear that fished in the Thames, held on a leash by the sheriffs, was introduced to me, as was the truth that the bears and lions that James I owned were baited into attack with dogs (over 250 mastiffs called the Tower home in 1585 for that specific purpose).
A big zoo was also housed in the Tower and by the mid 1820s there were over 60 species and 260 animals there, including crocodiles, tigers, monkeys, porcupines, and vultures. I also found out that the ravens that live in the Tower (there are a bunch of them -- big ones, too. You aren't supposed to get near them because they've been known to bite -- they're highly carnivorous little devils) actually have their wings clipped because of the old legend that says if they fly away from the Tower, London is history (and isn't this the most ironic thing you've heard? The city so focused on the past and history is terrified to become it...)
After this, we walk around the place, snap some more photos, and then head over to the Tower Bridge. We pay for a tour of the bridge, a rather lame recreation of its history, but the payoff comes when we actually get to the top and look out at the city. The view here rivals that of St. Paul's (both of which I have seen on severely overcast and cloudy days -- imagine if I see them with the sun out? I'll probably faint dead away...) Two interesting things about the bridge are how it works (via the cantilever system and the use of hydraulics) and its age (it opened on June 30, 1894 and cost nearly $3 million to make back then!) After this we buy some overpriced souvenirs (is there any other type?) and head out in the rain for a quick Tube ride and a reunion with our flat.
Saturday, January 15 ---
--- Wake up early (have I slept in at all on this trip? Gorry.) and head to Portobello Road, a quaint little road that, on every Saturday from 7 to 5, is filled with tiny booths for as far as the eye can see. The people (and the purveyors) come from miles around, the distances traveled almost as far as the shops stretch down both sides of the road.
The stands sell everything from antiques, vintage clothes, CDs and WWII memoribilia (my favorite being the different gas masks for sale dirt cheap (only 10-15 bucks! I'm probably going to come home with one of these even though I have no practical use for it (except clubbing), but that's never stopped me before, right?) to exotic (and otherwise) foods, meats, and ethnic cuisine (everything from German to Jamaican, Thai to Tandoori). It takes absolutely forever to get through it all, and we actually never finish the whole thing; we wuss out and turn back before the end, yet we were still gone for three hours.
The coolest thing I spy is a Jamaican man who has a mat full of lightbulbs. Intrigued, our group approaches and asks him what's the dilly. He has painted on the lightbulbs in bright colors so that when they're lit up, they spray their rainbow of hues across the room in the shape of his drawings. He's got simpler pictures of dolphins, fish and stars to more complex scenes like people sitting on a porch in Jamaica or a Rasta man smoking a joint. They all are in the vein of tribal African-American art with their simple shapes and lines, yet bright colors and entertaining depictions. Very cool and very cheap -- the girls in the group each pick up two for 5 pounds.
We then head back, I do a little studying, and after a tasty TV dinner (without the TV, of course. I just stare at myself in the window while I'm eating and make funny faces to entertain myself. My neighbors across the courtyard must think I'm an idiot. How very perceptive they are from such a distance...) we head out to one of the other apartments for a little pre-partying.
Pretty much the entire group is there, so there's roughly 75 people spread out over two or three rooms, and we're all acting like idiots. Should be a cheerful harbinger for the evening to come (luckily, it is.) We're drinking Olde English malt liquor (only the finest for college kids abroad) from a THREE LITER PLASTIC BOTTLE! We were downing this high quality (boy, we really were drunk) ale while jointly singing Juvenile's love song, "Back that ass up" and Digital Underground's "Humpty Dance." It was the greatest.
After our expeditions into the perils of amateur karaoke and cheap malt liquor, we split for the Sports Cafe, an American sports bar that is open late for dancing. My boogie shoes carefully strapped on, I enter the joint prepared to put on a show. We dance, drink some more (though not too much, surprisingly (both to me and to you, probably) -- I was having too much fun gettin' down) and have a grand old time.
Special entertainment was provided by Katy, one of the girls in my group, who got hit on by at least half a dozen black guys and an equal amount of native British guys. They're much more forward here than in the States -- these guys just come up and start grinding on the girls (and the occasional guy, though not due to differing sexualities, just blame it on the low amounts of lighting, the high amounts of alcohol, and the fact that I've been working out so I'm pretty curvaceous upstairs (someone said I look like Marilyn Monroe with smaller hips!) -- at least that's what I tell myself when the lights go out and I try to find sleep's warm embrace...)
I had to rescue her and the other girls in my group a dozen times over the course of the night thanks to the overzealous British bulldogs (once I even got threatened to be beaten up by one of the guys whose dance partner I purloined. I sweet-talked him out of it, though, but it was kinda dicey there for a while. He was like, "Where's the girl you took away from me?" And I was all, "How should I know, dude? I figured she was out there with you (a lie -- she was in the can). I bought her a drink (another lie -- I can barely afford to buy myself a drink) and then she left." And then he was like, "Aww, man. I'm so sorry. Women suck. Let me buy you a drink," he said while putting his arm around me and suavely checking on my luggage. (Sadly, this is the truth. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I can still hear the lambs screaming...))
A fun observation of the party scene that night -- these people like to move a lot more when they dance. I went out there in typical American party mode -- head bobbing, little dipping movements in the shoulders and knees -- you know, cool. Then I got ran into by the freely flailing arms and torsos of the people around me, quickly learning that you don't want to fall on the floors of bars because they're often quite wet and dirty, so you better get moving. These people looked ridiculous -- those hugely exaggerated movements, crass disregard for inhibition and one's appearance to others. In short, it was great! I found a room full of people who loved acting as stupid as I do on the dance floor! We danced (if you could call it that -- more like convulsed) until 3 in the morning and I for one can't wait to return there.
We catch a cab and head back, and at first it's your typical ride home from the bars, no different than those encountered hundreds of times (I mean, ONCE, Dad, I swear) at school. Then I realize something is a little different. "Uh, guys? Is that Big Ben?" We look out the window and sure enough, Big Ben and Parliament roll by, slickly illuminated in the moonlit sky, quickly followed by Buckingham Palace. It was unreal. I'm so used to driving by the Wendy's and the porn bars at school that this was quite a change, suffice it to say. Still a little amazed, I turn in for the night, body still jerking from the beat rolling in my head...